•  ***" 

1  «                       I 

I  PHILIP                            I 

:  CURTIS  S 


CRATER'S    GOLD 


"MR.    STILES,   DO  YOU   WANT  TO   SELL   YOUR   PLACE?" 


See  p.  4 


CRATER'S  GOLD 


A  NOVEL  BY 

PHILIP    CURTISS 


WITH  FRONTISPIECE  BY 
W.  C.  DEXTER 


A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY 
Publishers  New  York 

Published  by  arrangement  with  Harper  &  Brothers 


CRATER'S  GOLD 

Copyright,  1918  1919.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CRATER'S   GOLD 


2134806 


CRATER'S    GOLD 


CHAPTER  I 

OTILES  sat  in  his  study,  smoking  his  break- 
<-}  fast  pipe,  and  pondered  the  merits  of  being 
rich.  For  this  train  of  thought  his  setting  was 
rather  enchanting,  as  there  was  not  a  thing  in  the 
room  which  was  not  disreputable,  not  even  his 
coat.  There  were  holes  in  the  carpet,  the  wall- 
paper sagged  in  strips,  while  the  chair  in  which  he 
was  sitting  was  a  chair,  but  that  was  about  as  far 
as  one  felt  like  going.  Yet,  curiously,  Stiles  really 
was  rich.  He  had  been  for  just  three  weeks,  and 
those  three  weeks  had  been  wholly  devoted  to 
seeing  how  near  a  human  being  could  come  to 
complete  inertia. 

Theoretically,  Stiles  wanted  nothing  to  happen 
— ever.  For  fifteen  years  of  his  lif e  things  had  done 
nothing  but  happen.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
forestall  anything  more  in  that  line,  but  actually 
he  was  not  greatly  upset  when  his  reverie  was 
broken  by  the  sound  of  steps  on  the  gravel  path 
and  then  by  louder  steps  on  the  unpainted  piazza. 
When  the  visitor,  instead  of  knocking  or  shouting, 


2  CRATER'S    GOLD 

began  to  fumble  around  the  open  front  door  and 
even  went  the  length  of  ringing  the  disused  bell, 
Stiles  was  actively  curious.  His  impulse  was  to 
answer  the  bell  in  person,  but  a  sudden  baronial 
whim  set  him  back  in  his  chair.  It  was  the  first 
time  in  his  career  as  master  of  his  own  house  that 
the  outraged  bell  had  ever  been  called  upon  to 
perform,  and  it  struck  him  as  happy  to  sit  back 
and  let  his  household  go  through  the  whole  ritual — 
granted  it  could. 

The  household  could,  but  it  took  its  time,  for 
Mrs.  Fields,  the  housekeeper,  was  deaf  and  an- 
tique. The  indignant  clamor  of  the  bell  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  deep  silence,  a  proper  interval  for  clean 
apron  and  rolling  down  sleeves,  for  outlining  future 
apologies  for  untidy  states,  and  then  the  swishing 
sound  of  Mrs.  Fields  in  action.  Voices  sounded 
in  the  front  hall,  steps  on  the  sandy  linoleum  of 
the  passageway,  and  then  a  stranger  appeared  at 
the  door  of  the  study.  Behind  him  for  a  moment 
appeared  also  Mrs.  Fields  with  an  effect  of  tiptoes 
and  a  look  of  hate.  It  was  ironing-day. 

The  stranger  took  his  own  time  about  intro- 
ducing himself.  He  was  a  fattish  man,  rather 
fishlike  in  his  wonder  as  he  looked  round  the  room, 
opening  and  shutting  his  little  mouth,  but  what  he 
was  thinking  he  might  just  as  well  have  said  out 
loud.  He  had  evidently  come  to  see  a  landed  pro- 
prietor, probably  had  had  a  picture  of  one  in  his 
mind,  but  landed  proprietors,  as  he  had  always 
imagined  them,  did  not  wear  coats  which  were 


CRATER'S    GOLD  3 

out  at  the  elbows  and  sit  in  chairs  with  curled  hair 
bulging  out  through  the  cushions. 

As  to  the  visitor  himself,  he  was  one  of  those 
blue-serge  and  stiff-shirt-in-the-summer  men  who 
are  so  ostentatiously  clean  as  to  be  offensive.  He 
did  not  smell  of  soap,  exactly,  but  one  imagined 
he  might.  He  was  one  of  those  men  who  rub  their 
palms  together  continually  to  give  the  air  of  brisk 
well-being.  His  name,  it  came  out,  was  Baum- 
garten,  and  even  before  he  said  it  Stiles  guessed, 
from  his  heavy,  conciliatory  manner,  that  he  had 
something  to  sell. 

"You're  a  writer,  ain't  you,  Mr.  Stiles?"  began 
the  visitor,  and  because  he  said  it  about  as  he 
would  have  said,  "You're  a  school-teacher,  ain't 
you?"  Stiles  replied: 

"No,  I'm  a  newspaper-man,  or  used  to  be." 

He  said  it  with  conscious  defiance,  for  every 
trait  in  the  visitor's  manner  was  irritating;  but, 
curiously,  the  announcement  rather  cleared  the 
atmosphere,  rather  raised  his  standing  instead  of 
debasing  it,  as  he  had  intended.  Newspaper-men 
were  a  known  quantity.  They  wrote  advertise- 
ments sometimes — and  made  money  at  it.  If  they 
knew  the  ropes  they  could  even  aspire  to  be  press 
agents,  not  a  lucrative  job  in  the  eyes  of  men  like 
Baumgarten,  but  still  one  that  classed  them  as 
men  of  the  world. 

"I've  heard  of  you,  Mr.  Stiles,"  announced  the 
visitor,  impressively.  "Charlie  Eksberger  has 
spoken  about  you." 


4  CRATER'S    GOLD 

He  paused  to  watch  the  effect  of  this  tremendous 
announcement,  and  the  statement  really  had  made 
an  impression  on  Stiles.  He  knew  that  the  man 
was  lying.  Stiles  had  never  known  the  famous 
Eksberger  nor  had  he  any  desire  to  know  him, 
but  he  had  to  concede  the  fact  that  his  visitor 
had  chosen  the  name  with  exceeding  skill.  To 
most  reporters  and  even  writers  it  would  have 
been  magic.  The  thing  really  piqued  him  now — 
what  in  the  world  this  cloak-and-suit  type  of  per- 
son, who  thought  of  a  rather  flashy  and  boastful 
theatrical  man  as  the  last  word  in  eminence,  could 
want  of  a  lazy  recluse  in  a  run-down  house  in  a  far 
country  village.  He  would  be  very  much  disap- 
pointed if  it  proved  to  be  nothing  but  fire  insur- 
ance. The  visitor  did  not  keep  him  long  in  sus- 
pense. One  could  see  that  he  could  not  ignore 
the  evidence  of  the  puffy  chairs  and  the  holes  in 
the  carpet.  One  could  see  him  say  to  himself, 
"Well,  I  guess  these  so-called  gentlemen  need  the 
mazuma  as  badly  as  any  one  else."  Thus  he  had 
somewhat  the  air  of  one  bringing  glad  tidings  when 
he  burst  out : 

"Mr.  Stiles,  do  you  want  to  sell  your  place?" 

Smug  and  expectant  he  stood  there,  rubbing 
his  hands,  but,  to  his  amazement,  Stiles  was  un- 
moved. 

"No,"  he  replied,  "I  don't." 

The  visitor's  jaw  dropped  as  far  as  such  a  jaw 
could  drop.  He  still  looked  like  a  fish,  but  like  a 
fish  startled  at  bumping  its  nose  against  the  glass 


CRATER'S    GOLD  5 

of  the  aquarium,  and  to  Stiles  the  effect  was  quite 
worth  the  sudden  decision,  for  it  was  a  sudden 
decision.  Up  to  that  hour  Stiles  had  only  been 
occupying  the  old  house,  which  had  formed  a  part 
of  his  unexpected  inheritance,  until  somebody 
should  come  along  and  offer  him  almost  anything 
for  it.  He  didn't  want  the  old  wreck.  He  didn't 
want  to  live  in  the  country,  anyway.  He  had 
seven  or  eight  thousand  a  year  from  less  hampering 
sources.  He  could  sit  on  the  small  of  his  back  and 
dream  in  the  twilight  in  a  dozen  places  far  more 
sociable  than  this. 

But  if  Baumgarten  with  his  fishlike  mouth  and 
his  patronizing  air  wanted  the  house,  Stiles  would 
not  sell  it.  It  became  valuable  to  him  for  just  that 
reason.  For  fifteen  years  he  had  slaved  in  an 
Atmosphere  in  which  a  large  part  of  his  business 
had  lain  in  enduring  insults  and  patronage  from 
just  such  men  as  Baumgarten.  Now,  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  he  had  such  a  man  coming  to 
him  and  asking  for  something.  He  would  probably 
never  have  such  a  chance  again. 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  repeated,  with  icy  courtesy. 
"The  place  is  not  for  sale." 

"But,"  gasped  Baumgarten,  whoever  he  might 
be  and  whatever  he  might  want,  "you  had  it  listed 
with — what's  his  name? — the  agent?  Pillars?" 

"Pullar,"  corrected  Stiles.  "Yes,  I  did,  but 
I've  changed  my  mind." 

The  visitor  looked  at  him  shrewdly.  All  his 
mask  of  flattery  had  fallen  off  now. 


6  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"What  made  you  change  your  mind?'* 

His  tone  was  almost  insulting,  and  Stiles's  eyes 
narrowed.  He  did  not  like  the  bullying  air.  It 
was  none  of  Baumgarten's  business  why  he  had 
changed  his  mind. 

"I  have  learned  something  I  didn't  know  when 
I  offered  the  place." 

The  remark  was  meant  as  a  snub,  and  to  a 
human  being  it  would  have  been.  All  that  Stiles 
knew  that  he  hadn't  known  before  was  that  Baum- 
garten  wanted  the  property  and  that  he  didn't 
like  Baumgarten,  but  the  effect  of  the  statement 
was  startling. 

"What — what  have  you  learned?"  gasped  the 
visitor,  rather  disgusting  in  his  red  discomfiture. 

Stiles  almost  laughed  aloud  at  his  unexpected 
success,  but  he  was  somewhat  at  a  loss  to  know 
what  to  say  next. 

"Oh,  come,"  he  tried  at  last,  knowingly,  "you 
don't  suppose  that  I  don't  know  when  I've  got  a 
gold  mine?" 

By  the  words  Stiles  merely  meant,  ironically, 
that  he  was  not  so  simple  as  he  might  look,  that 
he  was  not  born  yesterday,  but,  to  his  utter  amaze- 
ment, Baumgarten  turned  suddenly  gouty.  Stiles 
had  once  seen  a  man  of  his  type  pulled  from  in 
front  of  a  taxicab,  and  the  reproduction  was 
perfect. 

Then  naturally  the  visitor  tried  to  pass  it  off, 
just  as  Stiles  knew  that  he  would. 

"Oh  yes,  sure,"  he  laughed,  thinking  that  his 


CRATER'S   GOLD  7 

laugh  was  really  convincing.  Then  again  he  did 
just  what  Stiles  knew  that  he  would  do,  or,  rather, 
hoped  that  he  would  do,  to  make  his  type  perfect. 

"Now  come,  Mr.  Stiles,"  he  said,  leaning  for- 
ward. His  method  of  flattery  had  now  become 
that  of  one  man  of  the  world  to  another.  Stiles 
imagined  that  very  soon  he  would  begin  tapping 
his  knee,  and  in  time  he  even  did  that — "now 
come,  Mr.  Stiles,  just  what  do  you  want?" 

Stiles  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  sit 
back  and  smile  at  him  cynically,  just  for  the  sheer 
novelty  of  watching  one  of  these  all-wise  men 
squirming. 

"I  don't  see  how  I  can  make  it  any  plainer," 
he  said,  rather  curtly,  drawing  his  knee  out  of 
reach  of  the  fat  forefinger.  "As  for  that,"  he  went 
on,  "what  do  you  want  of  the  place  yourself?" 

So  engrossed  had  he  become  in  watching  Baum- 
garten  in  his  discomfiture  that  he  had  completely 
forgotten  the  incident  of  a  minute  past,  but  Baum- 
garten  quickly  recalled  him.  He  smiled  flabbily. 

"I  guess  we  understand  each  other,  Mr.  Stiles." 

After  that,  of  course,  there  was  nothing  for  Stiles 
to  answer  except,  "Yes,  I  guess  we  do,"  although, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  did  not  understand  one  syl- 
lable about  the  whole  affair  except  that  the  visitor 
wanted  his  place  and  wanted  it  for  some  reason 
quite  apart  from  its  value  as  low-grade  farming- 
land.  "Until  he  did  understand,  he  could  hardly  be 
anything  except  evasive:  but  even  at  that  he  was. 
tempted. 

2 


8  CRATER'S   GOLD 

With  little,  estimating  eyes  Baumgarten  was 
watching  him.  "Tell  you  what  you  do,  Mr. 
Stiles.  Give  me  a  figure — your  own  figure." 

It  was  this  that  tempted  Stiles.  Until  three 
weeks  before,  he  had  never  had  a  cent  beyond  his 
weekly  wages,  and  he  had  reached  an  age  when 
money  was  terribly  concrete,  and  the  lack  of  money 
still  more  so.  The  bird  in  hand  was  the  only  bird 
which  had  ever  sung  for  his  ears.  It  was  a  tre- 
mendous temptation  to  obey  the  command  and 
state  a  figure — some  impossible  figure,  of  course. 
To  do  so  might  force  the  visitor  to  lay  his  hand  on 
the  table  at  once;  it  might  even  give  Stiles  some 
idea  of  what  the  whole  crazy  business  was  about. 

But  equally,  as  he  realized,  to  set  a  figure  would 
be  to  lay  his  own  hand  on  the  table.  The  size  of 
the  figure  might  show  in  an  instant  his  own  real 
ignorance  of  what  his  visitor  was  after.  Suppose 
that  it  were  a  ten-thousand-dollar  matter  and  he 
said  a  hundred  thousand.  Baumgarten  would  sim- 
ply laugh.  Suppose,  on  the  contrary,  that  he  said 
ten  thousand  when  he  might  just  as  well  have  said 
a  hundred  thousand.  Suppose  that  he  said  any 
preposterous  sum  and  really  got  it.  He  would 
still  be  the  loser,  for  he  understood  a  man  of  the 
Baumgarten  type  well  enough  to  know  that  what- 
ever price  he  would  pay  for  a  thing  would  be  a 
very  small  fraction  of  what  he  intended  to  make 
on  it  himself.  Men  like  his  cloak-and-suit  visitor 
do  not  go  two  hundred  miles  into  the  country  on  a 
hot  June  day  to  pay  the  market  value  for  things. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  9 

There  was  too  much  of  the  trader  in  Baum- 
garten  not  to  let  him  see  in  a  general  way  what 
was  going  on  in  Stiles 's  mind.  His  little  eyes,  on 
the  other  hand,  told  Stiles  that  he  saw,  and  steeled 
his  resolve. 

"No,"  he  said,  suddenly,  with  a  recall  of  his 
former  stiffness.  "If  I  don't  want  to  sell,  what  is 
the  use  of  setting  a  figure?" 

Baumgarten  did  not  weaken  in  the  least. 
"There's  no  harm  in  setting  a  figure,"  he  insisted. 
He  licked  his  lips  over  the  favorite  term  and 
rubbed  his  hands. 

"No,"  replied  Stiles,  "there's  no  use  talking  at 
all."  To  dismiss  the  matter  he  said,  "Will  you 
have  a  cigar?" 

He  brought  from  under  the  table  a  box  of  very 
decent  domestic  affairs,  but  even  in  his  social 
manner  Baumgarten  ran  true  to  type.  He  looked 
at  the  box  without  making  a  motion,  then  reached 
to  his  pocket  and  took  out  cigars  with  red  bands. 

* '  Here,  smoke  one  of  mine, ' '  he  said.  ' '  These  are 
real  Havana." 

Stiles  bridled  a  moment,  but  saw  that  the  fellow 
did  not  mean  to  be  rude.  He  merely  was  still 
possessed  by  the  thought  of  bringing  sunshine  into 
a  barren  life,  but  Stiles  shook  his  head. 

"No,  thank  you.  Never  when  I  can  get  a 
pipe." 

The  visitor  looked  at  him  in  doubt.  He  was 
charmingly  cloak-and-suit.  There  are  still  men  who 
cannot  believe  that  any  man  would  actually  smoke 


io  CRATER'S   GOLD 

a  pipe  except  as  a  matter  of  economy,  yet  some- 
thing in  Stiles's  independent  attitude  almost  con- 
vinced him.  He  raked  his  experience  for  some- 
thing to  match  it,  for  part  of  the  pride  of  such  men 
is  to  meet  nothing  new  to  their  experience. 

"Englishmen  smoke  pipes,"  he  said,  at  last, 
proudly. 

His  host  smiled.    "So  they  tell  me." 

It  interested  him  to  see  that  the  minute  that  he 
had  dismissed  the  matter  of  trading,  Baumgarten 
had  dropped  it,  too.  He  had  often  wondered  what 
a  Simon-pure  Broadway  type  would  look  like  away 
from  its  background.  He  didn't  dislike  the  fellow 
half  as  much  as  he  had  tried  to,  but  on  a  social 
plane  Baumgarten  was  rather  forlorn.  Stiles  did 
not  see  any  harm  in  asking: 

"How  is  Mr.  Eksberger?" 

His  visitor's  face  brightened,  and  Stiles  learned 
at  least  that  Baumgarten  did  know  the  dingy 
notable,  although  still  incredulous  that  Eksberger 
had  ever  spoken  of  him. 

"Fine,  last  I  saw  him,"  said  Baumgarten.  "He's 
a  great  Charlie." 

"You're  a  New-Yorker  yourself?"  suggested 
Stiles. 

Baumgarten  smiled  in  hopeless  pity.  "Oh,  Mr. 
Stiles,  have  a  heart !  Do  I  look  as  if  I  came  from 
Duluth?"  Then,  responding  to  the  ultimate  pull 
of  his  soul,  he  added,  "Ever  come  to  the  city,  Mr. 
Stiles?"  for  he  was  of  course  one  of  those  men  who 
could  not  say  the  shortest  sentence  without  in- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  ii 

eluding  the  name  of  the  person  to  whom  he  was 
speaking. 

"I  lived  there  for  fifteen  years,"  answered  Stiles, 
and,  not  because  it  was  true,  but  because  some- 
thing about  his  visitor  still  subtly  annoyed  him, 
he  added,  "I  hate  the  place." 

The  effect  was  just  what  he  had  imagined  that 
it  would  be. 

"You  don't  say.  You  don't  say,"  muttered 
Baumgarten,  too  pained  even  to  argue.  Then, 
seeing  at  once  where  the  trouble  must  lie,  he  offered 
more  sunshine. 

"Better  let  me  show  you  a  good  time  the  next 
time  you're  there.  It  all  depends  on  knowing  the 
ropes."  He  held  out  again  his  trump  card. 
"Charlie  Eksberger  and  all  that  bunch.  I  know 
them  all." 

Stiles  thanked  him  abjectly,  but  the  conversa- 
tion languished.  Baumgarten  rose  to  his  feet,  and, 
according  to  his  code,  this  action  in  itself  permitted 
him  to  reopen  the  matter  of  sales.  As  a  delicate 
preliminary  he  went  for  his  pocket  again. 

"Better  take  one  of  these.  Smoke  it  some  other 
time." 

He  grandly  offered  two  cigars,  to  give  Stiles  a 
choice.  This  time  Stiles  took  one,  and  Baumgarten 
seized  the  opening. 

"Better  change  your  mind,  Mr.  Stiles,"  he 
urged.  "Better  give  me  a  figure." 

But  Stiles  froze  up.  He  merely  grunted  a  laugh. 
"Are  you  going  to  be  in  town  long?" 


12  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Into  the  question  he  managed  to  squeeze  a 
faint  tone  of  dismissal,  to  imply  that,  no  matter 
how  long  he  might  be  in  town,  their  paths  would 
not  cross,  and  at  last  the  colossal  assurance  was 
pierced.  Baumgarten  flushed  and  turned  suddenly. 

"I  tell  you  what  I'll  do,  Mr.  Stiles." 

His  face  was  very  much  in  earnest,  his  social 
manner  entirely  gone.  Disgruntlement,  anxiety, 
and  a  gambler's  hope  had  taken  its  place.  He 
took  from  his  pocket  a  little  red  memorandum- 
book,  scratched  rapidly  with  a  silver  pencil,  and 
tore  out  the  leaf,  holding  it  folded  around  one 
finger. 

"I  tell  you  what  I'll  do,  Mr.  Stiles.  I'm  not  a 
man  to  be  bluffed.  On  that  paper  is  written  just 
the  figure  that  I'll  raise  the  ante." 

He  held  it  out  tentatively,  and  Stiles  looked  at 
him  with  an  expression  which  he  hoped  he  was 
keeping  from  being  puzzled.  He  vaguely  gathered 
that  taking  the  paper  would  form  a  contract. 
"Whose  ante?"  he  did  not  dare  to  ask,  but  a 
brilliant  alternative  came  to  him. 

"Anybody's  ante?"  he  demanded,  suddenly. 

Baumgarten  rather  gasped,  but  he  was  game. 
"Anybody's  ante,"  he  agreed,  "so  long  as  it's 
now.  But  it's  take  it  or  leave  it."  He  stood  gazing 
at  Stiles  with  a  grin  of  increasing  triumph. 

As  no  ante  existed  at  all,  so  far  as  he  knew,  there 
was  only  one  thing  for  Stiles  to  do,  but  even  at 
that  it  was  probably  the  bravest  act  of  his  life  that 
he  did  not  reach  for  that  paper. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  13 

"Not  a  chance,"  he  replied,  at  last,  in  a  voice 
that  surprised  himself. 

Baumgarten's  eyes  narrowed. 
"Then  you  leave  it?" 
"I  leave  it." 


CHAPTER  II 

TTEN  minutes  after  Baumgarten's  livery -car 
A  had  disappeared  down  the  hill,  Pullar,  the 
agent,  came  from  the  other  direction,  stalking 
across  the  fields.  He  was  an  athletic  young  man 
who  tied  trout  flies  and  liked  the  internals  of  mo- 
tors— quite  a  bit  of  a  country  gentleman.  Stiles 
saw  him  coming  and  went  to  the  piazza  rail. 

"I  was  just  going  over  to  see  you,"  he  hailed. 

Pullar  stopped  in  his  tracks.  "You  haven't  sold 
the  place,  have  you?" 

Stiles,  from  his  vantage-point  of  the  unpainted 
piazza,  looked  at  him  with  a  sudden  grin.  What 
was  coming  now? 

"No,"  he  replied  to  Pullar's  question,  "not  only 
that,  but  I'm  thinking  of  taking  it  out  of  the 
market." 

Pullar  had  a  way  of  his  own  for  hiding  his 
thoughts.  It  consisted  in  taking  a  pipe  from  one 
pocket  of  his  tweed  jacket,  a  plug  of  black  tobacco 
from  another,  a  knife  from  another,  and  a  box  of 
matches  from  a  fourth.  To  slice  the  tobacco,  fill 
the  pipe,  put  up  the  knife,  and  light  a  match  kept 
his  eyes  on  the  ground  for  some  time.  Then,  of 


CRATER'S   GOLD  15 

course,  conversation  could  be  resumed  between 
puffs  and  behind  the  match,  which  made  his  face 
non-committal.  He  had  done  all  this  and  blown 
out  a  first  cloud  of  smoke  before  he  said  anything. 

"Going  to  live  here?"  he  asked  his  strong, 
rank  smoke  coming  over  to  Stiles. 

Stiles  liked  Pullar  immensely,  but  the  new  game 
was  too  tempting.  "Why?"  he  asked.  "Have 
you  got  an  offer?" 

Pullar  looked  down  at  his  pipe  and  pressed  the 
hot  coals  with  his  thumb.  He  had  hard,  heavy 
fingers -that  contrasted  oddly  with  his  rather  fine 
face,  and  the  coals  did  not  seem  to  burn  him. 

"Well,  not  exactly,"  he  said,  "but  there  might 
be  a  way  to  get  the  thing  off  your  hands." 

"What  did  Baumgarten  offer?"  asked  Stiles, 
suddenly. 

Pullar  looked  up  in  surprise,  but,  unlike  the 
other  caller  of  the  afternoon,  he  was  human  first 
and  trader  afterward,  and  he  broke  into  a  hearty 
laugh. 

"What  do  you  know  about  Baumgarten?"  he 
asked. 

"He  left  about  ten  minutes  before  you  arrived." 

"The  son  of  a  gun!"  exclaimed  Pullar. 

"I  agree  with  you,"  laughed  Stiles. 

After  that  the  matter  was  in  the  open  with  a 
man  like  Pullar.  He  puffed  his  pipe  in  a  thought- 
ful way. 

"What  did  he  offer  you?"  he  asked  from  lips 
closed  around  his  pipe-stem. 


16  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Stiles  was  about  to  answer  him  as  frankly  as  he 
asked,  but  a  sudden  caution  suggested  itself.  Thus 
he  answered,  on  second  thoughts: 

"Almost  anything  I  wanted  to  name." 

"Why  didn't  you  name  a  million  dollars?" 

"I  thought  of  that,"  replied  Stiles,  soberly,  and 
Pullar  looked  at  him  with  a  sudden  admiring 
appraisal. 

Stiles  joined  the  other  man  on  the  ground,  and 
the  two  looked  up  at  the  house — the  blistered 
piazza,  the  yellow  clapboarded  walls,  the  sagging 
green  blinds,  and  the  atrocious  veneered  front 
doors  with  their  malarial,  colored  panes  set  around 
central  panes  of  ground  glass.  It  was  just  such  a 
house  as  country  squires  used  to  build  in  the 
forties  to  set  themselves  a  plane  above  their  neigh- 
bors. There  was  certain  to  be  a  cupola  on  the  roof. 
Stiles  hardly  knew,  but  there  was  in  this  case. 
The  whole  place  with  nearly  a  hundred  acres  of 
land  was  taxed  for  four  thousand  dollars.  It  was 
listed  at  only  seven  in  the  estate  from  which  Stiles 
had  inherited  it,  yet  now  the  two  men  looked  at 
it  with  a  strange  and  whimsical  fascination. 

"Come  in,"  said  Stiles. 

"Of  course  I  told  him  about  the  gold-mine,"  he 
added,  casually;  but  Pullar,  who  had  been  about 
to  insert  his  pipe  in  his  teeth,  drew  it  sharply 
away  and  looked  at  him  with  his  mouth  still  open 
and  one  foot  poised  on  the  step. 

"The  what?" 

"The  pot  of  gold  or  whatever  it  is,"  explained 


CRATER'S   GOLD  17 

Stiles.  "Every  self-respecting  old  country  man- 
sion has  buried  treasure  somewhere." 

"Oh,"  replied  Pullar,  his  pipe  going  home  at  last ; 
but  Stiles  had  seen  a  queer  look  in  his  honest  eyes. 

"What  did  you  think  I  meant?" 

"Nothing,"  answered  Pullar,  but  still  not  at 
ease.  "I  didn't  quite  hear." 

"Just  the  same,  I  wonder  what  he  did  think  I 
meant,"  mused  Stiles,  a  half -hour  later,  as,  from 
the  piazza,  he  watched  Pullar  stalking  over  the 
meadows.  He  wondered  very  keenly.  What  man 
would  not  ?  But  the  truth  was  that  even  the  queer 
enigma  of  Baumgarten  and  the  elusive  suggestions 
which  Pullar  had  been  unable  to  hide  did  not  ex- 
cite him  very  greatly.  The  eyes  of  a  man  who, 
like  Andrew  Stiles,  has  watched  for  years  all  the 
high  emotions  of  life  grind  past  from  the  brutal 
detachment  of  a  reporter's  viewpoint,  grow  cynic 
and  unbelieving.  Mystery,  romance,  intrigue,  and 
promise — such  a  man  has  seen  them  all  rise  up 
and  wither,  one  after  the  other,  resolving  them- 
selves, most  of  them  into  common  sordidness,  oth- 
ers into  ridiculous  travesty,  until,  by  habit,  he 
discounts  every  question  at  sight. 

So  at  this  moment  the  only  emotion  by  which 
Stiles  really  found  himself  possessed  was  a  sort  of 
cynical  shrewdness.  He  simply  meant  to  take 
care.  Just  what  were  these  fellows  after?  He  won- 
dered, to  be  sure,  but  his  wonder  was  without 
illusion  and  iconoclastic.  Time  he  knew  to  be  the 
foe  of  all  scheming.  He  had  only  to  wait  for  the 


18  CRATER'S   GOLD 

game  to  uncover  itself.  He  wanted  to  get  excited 
about  ic,  to  make  it  an  adventure,  but  he  knew  with 
too  much  certainty  what  it  must  be.  A  few  thou- 
sand dollars  more  or  a  few  thousand  dollars  less  for 
a  piece  of  ground  that  he  did  not  want.  Meantime 
it  was  amusing  to  pull  the  strings  over  these  men, 
one  of  whom  he  found  himself  beginning  to  like, 
and  the  other  of  whom  he  found  for  the  most  part 
revolting. 

He  went  to  his  luncheon  smiling,  but  Mrs. 
Fields  he  discovered  to  be  in  anything  but  smiling 
mood.  To  answer  the  bell  on  her  ironing-day  was 
bad  enough,  but  to  have  to  serve  luncheon  at  half 
past  one!  Her  air  was  not  that  of  a  martyr,  ex- 
actly, rather  of  silent  scorn  toward  the  whole 
human  race.  She  watched  Stiles  actually  seated, 
then,  leaving  the  room,  came  back  with  a  long 
leather  object  which  she  placed  at  his  plate.  Her 
way  of  doing  the  thing  was  quite  in  accord  with 
her  mood,  a  certain  straight-mouthed,  wash-my- 
hands-of-the-whole-affair  manner  with  which  she 
put  the  thing  on  the  table-cloth  and  then  stepped 
back  to  watch  the  next  move. 

The  leather  object  was  an  old  pocket  folder,  but 
it  did  not  belong  to  Stiles,  and  he  looked  at  it, 
puzzled.  What  did  she  expect  him  to  do  with  it? 
His  relations  with  Mrs.  Fields  had  not  been  on 
terms  of  the  greatest  trust,  and  he  did  not  like  to 
confess  that  it  might  be  something  that  he  had 
asked  for  and  then  forgotten.  He  searched  his 
mind,  but  recollection  brought  nothing  about  the 


CRATER'S    GOLD  19 

worn,  heavy  case.  It  might  be  something  that 
went  with  the  house.  Perhaps  the  master  of  the 
place  was  supposed  by  old  tradition  to  sign  it  or 
inspect  its  contents  on  the  third  Wednesday  of 
every  month.  Possibly  that  was  the  way  that  the 
milkman  sent  in  his  bills.  He  had  learned  that 
the  butcher  sent  his  in  a  little  brown  book  with  a 
picture  of  a  fabulous  ox.  From  the  air  with  which 
she  put  it  before  him  it  might  be  even  his  house- 
keeper's notice  that  she  had  resigned.  There 
seemed  to  be  nothing  for  it  except  to  be  amateurish 
and  open  the  thing. 

There  was  money  inside,  crisp  new  bills,  and 
Stiles  pulled  them  out,  but  at  first  glance  they 
appeared  a  little  unnatural.  He  thought  for  a 
moment  they  must  be  counterfeit,  but,  once  he  had 
spread  them  before  him,  he  understood  why  they 
looked  strange.  The  top  one  was  a  thousand-dollar 
note  and  so  were  the  others.  There  were  ten  in  all. 
Mrs.  Fields  must  have  been  glad  that  she  stayed. 

Stiles  took  the  money  into  his  hand  and  looked 
up. 

"Does  this  happen  often?" 

But  Mrs.  Fields  was  in  no  mood  for  persiflage. 

"I  found  it  on  the  study  floor." 

Oh — Baumgarten.  He  ought  to  have  guessed. 
With  a  sudden  inspiration  Stiles  looked  quickly  in 
every  compartment,  but  the  slip  which  his  visitor 
had  held  on  his  finger  was  not  to  be  found.  Any- 
way, Stiles  knew  now  exactly  the  sum  which 
Baumgarten  had  been  prepared  to  wave  in  his 


20  CRATER'S    GOLD 

face — but  as  an  offer  or  merely  to  bind  the  bar- 
gain ?  There  was  a  question  again.  He  looked  up 
at  Mrs.  Fields. 

"Have  you,  by  any  chance,  ever  heard  that 
there  was  oil  on  this  property,  or  a  gold-mine,  or 
anything?" 

Being  a  flippancy,  he  said  it  in  a  casual  voice, 
and  of  course  Mrs.  Fields  missed  it  all.  A  flippant 
remark  repeated  to  a  deaf  person  becomes  a  serious 
statement  of  fact  or  an  insult,  as  the  case  may  be, 
which  Stiles  realized  when  he  repeated  this  one  in 
abridged  and  amended  form. 

"I  asked  whether  any  one  had  ever  dug  for  oil 
on  this  place,  or  gold,  or  anything." 

Shouted  in  that  form  by  a  gentleman  with  ten 
thousand  dollars  in  his  hand,  it  did  not  sound  at 
all  as  Stiles  had  meant  it,  and  Mrs.  Fields  forgot 
to  be  scornful. 

"Your  uncle  once  said  he  wished  some  one 
would,"  she  replied,  but,  unfortunately,  Stiles 
knew  too  much  of  his  uncle  by  family  tradition  to 
be  greatly  fluttered  by  that.  Stiles's  uncle  had  not 
been  a  huge  success  as  a  person.  To  Mrs.  Fields, 
however,  the  matter  was  still  a  serious  proposition. 

"I  don't  guess  there's  any  one  around  here  who 
digs  much  for  oil,"  she  mused.  To  her  mind  oil  was 
apparently  a  native  of  any  soil,  like  flag-root.  She 
bore  this  out  with  her  next  question.  "Was  you 
thinking  of  digging  for  oil?" 

"Not,  at  least,  until  I've  been  to  the  village 
and  asked  a  few  questions,"  Stiles  replied. 


CHAPTER  III 

village  of  Eden  lay  at  a  distance  of  about 
-»•  two  miles  from  the  old  Crater  place.  There 
was  no  hotel,  but  Baumgarten,  if  he  were  still  in 
town,  might  be  at  a  white  house  which  sometimes 
"took  people."  It  had  "taken"  Stiles  himself  on 
the  night  of  his  arrival  and  before  he  had  learned 
of  the  existence  or  the  talents  of  Mrs.  Fields.  The 
process  of  "taking  people,"  like  all  commerce  in 
a  country  town,  was  made  to  appear  entirely  an 
"accommodation"  to  the  person  taken,  and  Stiles 
had  left  under  the  impression  that  the  bars  would 
never  be  let  down  again. 

In  Baumgarten's  case,  at  least,  they  had  not. 
The  white  house  had  never  heard  of  him,  and  Stiles 
wandered  up  the  elm-shaded  street,  rather  at  a 
loss.  Aside  from  his  natural  anxiety  to  relieve  the 
other  man's  mind,  no  matter  how  much  he  dis- 
liked him  personally,  he  had  looked  forward  to  an 
amusing  moment  when  he  handed  the  pocketbook 
over.  There  was  Pullar,  of  course.  Pullar  must 
know  his  client's  address.  But  there  again,  was  it 
best  that  Pullar  should  know  all  the  steps  of  his 
dealings  with  the  mysterious  Baumgarten? 

Suddenly  he  thought  of  Eksberger.    If  for  noth- 


22  CRATER'S    GOLD 

ing  else,  it  would  be  a  good  chance  to  find  out  just 
how  well  his  late  visitor  really  did  know  the  famous 
man  whose  name  he  so  glibly  used.  To  reach 
Eksberger  himself  a  letter  would  only  have  to  be 
addressed  to  New  York,  but,  as  it  happened, 
Stiles  actually  did  know  where  the  offices  of  the 
International  Amusement  Syndicate  were  located 
— "international "  meaning  one  theater  in  Toronto. 
Thus  by  the  aid  of  brown  paper  from  the  butcher's 
shop  he  walked  into  the  express  office,  all  pre- 
pared to  toss  over  the  counter  a  thin  package 
addressed  to  Charles  Eksberger,  Esqre,  note  to 
follow. 

The  express  agent,  a  youth  of  eighteen,  shared 
the  distaste  of  the  white  house  for  any  new  busi- 
ness. He  managed  to  take  the  small  parcel  with  a 
contempt  which  contained  the  warning  that  this 
must  be  positively  the  last  offense.  Grabbing  a  pad 
of  forms  and  a  carpenter's  pencil,  he  made  some 
illegible  scrawls  as  if  to  say  that  he  meant  to  get 
the  nasty  business  over  as  quickly  as  possible. 
Apparently  as  an  afterthought,  he  held  his  pencil 
aloft. 

"Any  value?" 

Stiles  had  been  waiting  for  this.  "Ten  thousand 
dollars,"  he  replied. 

The  youth  dropped  the  package  like  an  unclean 
thing.  "Holy  smoke!"  he  exclaimed.  "What  is 
it?  Radium?" 

Stiles  made  no  reply  and  the  express  youth  did 
not  insist.  He  was  a  broken  man. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  23 

"I  don't  believe  they'll  let  me  take  this,"  he  said, 
apologetically. 

He  took  down  a  canvas  book  the  size  of  an 
atlas,  printed  in  very  small  type.  It  was  labeled 
"Preliminary  Instructions  for  Agents,"  and  as  he 
pored  through  the  pages  Stiles  wondered  what  the 
agents  would  have  to  learn  when  they  really  got  to 
the  serious  work  of  their  profession. 

The  youth  shook  his  head.  "There  ain't  noth- 
ing about  it  in  here." 

His  whole  manner  had  changed.  He  had  taken 
Stiles  into  the  business  as  a  partner,  even  looked  to 
him  for  possible  guidance. 

"You  might  take  it  up  over  the  wire,"  suggested 
Stiles.  He  would  be  back  in  an  hour  or  so. 

Stiles  had,  in  fact,  a  way  in  which  he  was  rather 
anxious  to  spend  an  hour  in  the  village.  His  plans, 
indeed,  rather  hinged  on  this,  for  he  had  a  shrewd 
suspicion  that  there  was  one  man  in  Eden  with 
whom  a  ten  minutes'  talk  would  clear  the  mists 
from  this  whole  ridiculous  business.  This  man  was 
Judge  Tyler,  a  person  who  lurked  in  the  back  of 
his  mind  as  a  white-whiskered  patriarch  and  his 
late  uncle's  best  friend,  for  best  friends  of  deceased 
old  gentlemen  are  usually  judges  and  usually  have 
white  whiskers. 

Inquiry  directed  him  to  a  house  which  looked 
about  as  the  old  Crater  place  would  have  looked  if 
some  one  had  spared  it  a  coat  of  paint  from  time 
to  time.  With  its  cupola,  its  spotless  white  walls, 
and  its  two  Noah's  Ark  little  spruce-trees  in  front, 

3 


24  CRATER'S   GOLD 

this  was  rural  aristocracy  caught  at  the  source,  but 
as  an  uncle's  best  friend,  the  judge,  beyond  the 
fact  that  he  really  did  have  white  whiskers,  was 
not  a  success.  Like  every  one  else  in  the  town  with 
whom  he  had  tried  to  do  business,  the  judge  gave 
Stiles,  on  first  appearance,  the  benefit  of  no  doubts. 
Stiles  was  there  to  steal  and  pillage,  it  could  be 
seen  at  a  glance. 

Judge  Tyler,  moreover,  improved  on  acquaint- 
ance as  little  as  did  his  house.  The  latter,  on  the 
outside,  was  impressive  in  its  suggestion  of  huge 
log  fires  and  Colonial  grandeur.  On  the  inside,  so 
much  of  it  as  Stiles  was  permitted  to  see  smelled 
of  cabbage,  while  the  decorations  ran  heavily  to 
calendars  sent  out  by  insurance  companies  and 
lumber  firms.  The  judge  himself,  in  a  pin-check 
suit,  with  a  red  face  and  pure-white  whiskers, 
looked  like  a  rare  old  boy  whose  eye  would  light 
up  when  you  mentioned  Star  Pointer  or  Salvator, 
who  chuckled  over  Boswell's  Life  in  spare  mo- 
ments, and  had  personal  recollections  of  Henry 
Clay.  In  practice,  the  moment  he  opened  his 
mouth  he  disclosed  himself  as  a  nasal  old  rustic 
who  seemed  to  know  very  little  and  was  grimly 
determined  not  to  know  more.  He  was  not  even 
really  a  judge,  just  a  justice  of  the  peace,  an  office 
which  the  liveryman  had  also  held  and  which 
Pullar  himself  held  now. 

"Judge,"  said  Stiles,  nevertheless  determined  on 
perfect  frankness,  "why  does  a  Jewish  gentleman 
named  Baumgarten,  clothing  type,  wave  money 


CRATER'S    GOLD  25 

before  me  and  cry  aloud  for  my  place?  Why  do 
Jewish  gentlemen  want  places  in  Eden,  anyway? 
I  mean  this  Eden." 

"How?"  said  the  judge,  tartly. 

At  the  moment  they  were  sitting  in  the  room 
which  contained  the  judge's  desk — a  room  with 
linoleum  on  the  floor — no  rare  old  furniture,  no 
steel  engravings  of  Daniel  Webster.  Neither 
"office"  nor  "study,"  neither  "library"  nor 
"den,"  would  have  fitted  that  room.  A  dentist 
might  have  seen  possibilities  in  it.  The  judge, 
however,  was  doing  the  only  thing  which  he  had 
yet  done  which  was  really  in  character.  He  was 
toying  with  a  celluloid  paper-knife.  Old  gentlemen 
about  to  advise  the  nephews  of  deceased  best 
friends  should,  if  possible,  toy  with  paper-knives, 
and  Stiles  plucked  up  hope.  He  repeated  his 
question. 

"How?"  said  the  judge.  All  toying  ceased  at 
once. 

Stiles  saw  the  sort  of  judge  he  had  to  deal  with. 
"A  man  named  Baumgarten  wants  to  buy  my 
place,"  he  said,  abruptly. 

"What  for?"  snarled  the  judge. 

To  say  that  he  did  not  know  was  just  the  reason 
of  Stiles's  present  visit.  He  had,  in  fact,  come  to 
pour  out  his  heart  to  the  best  friend  of  his  deceased 
uncle,  and,  if  the  action  seemed  to  call  for  it,  to 
weep  on  his  bosom,  but  he  had  found  his  heart 
chilled  from  the  moment  that  he  had  smelled  cab- 
bage in  the  front  hall.  If  there  had  only  been  a 


26  CRATER'S    GOLD 

hint  of  fine  cigars,  a  chance  reference  to  John  C. 
Calhoun,  even  the  tiniest  portrait  of  Daniel  Web- 
ster, he  might  have  told  all  that  he  knew  or  all 
that  he  did  not  know.  Instead,  "What  for?" 
snapped  the  judge. 

"I  imagine  he  has  his  reasons,"  replied  Stiles. 

"Well,  air  you  going  to  sell?"  asked  the  judge. 

"That  depends  entirely,"  replied  Stiles. 

"Depends  on  what?" 

"What  a  sale  usually  depends  on." 

Stiles  said  it  with  a  sort  of  arch  and  hopeful 
shrewdness,  but  even  this  was  over  the  judge's 
head — and  that  fine  old  head,  too! 

"A  sale,"  explained  Stiles,  resignedly,  "usually 
depends  on  the  price  and  the  offer,  doesn't  it?" 

"Humph!"  said  the  judge. 

There  seemed  to  be  no  possible  reason  for  pro- 
longing this  interview,  but  Stiles  still  sat  there,  and 
the  judge  began  to  toy  with  the  paper-cutter 
again.  Stiles  became  almost  hopeful  once  more. 
Perhaps  the  long-overdue,  "My  boy,  your  uncle 
and  I  were  friends,"  was  coming  at  last.  Instead, 
the  judge  said,  suddenly: 

"Young  man,  you  won't  get  much  for  that 
place." 

"So,"  thought  Stiles,  "you  want  to  buy  it, 
too." 

"It's  taxed  for  four  thousand  dollars  and  it 
ain't  wuth  a  cent  more." 

"It  was  listed  in  the  estate  for  seven  thousand," 
said  Stiles,  sweetly.  He  had  a  sudden  vague  recol- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  27 

lection  that  the  judge  had  been  one  of  the  execu- 
tors or  something.  Pullar  had  been  the  one  with 
whom  he  had  talked.  ' '  Didn't  you  help  to  appraise 
it?"  he  added. 

The  judge  looked  away.  "That's  the  custom — 
to  double  the  tax  value." 

"I  suppose  you  wouldn't  give  seven  yourself?" 
said  Stiles,  almost  wistfully. 

"What  do  I  want  of  more  land?"  asked  the 
judge. 

"Well,  of  course,"  suggested  Stiles,  meaningly, 
"it  isn't  just  the  land  itself." 

The  judge  looked  at  him  sharply,  and  he  ex- 
plained, innocently.  "There's  the  house." 

"Old  rat-trap,"  said  the  judge. 

Stiles  rose  to  his  feet  suddenly.  "Well,  Judge," 
he  said,  genially,  "I  just  dropped  in  to  say  good 
morning,  anyway.  I  understood  that  you  and  my 
uncle  were  pretty  good  friends." 

"Sit  down,"  said  the  judge,  but  his  face  did 
soften  a  little. 

"Oh,  I  won't  take  any  more  of  your  time," 
insisted  Stiles,  airily,  and  was  well  on  his  way  to 
the  door  when  the  judge  recalled  him. 

"Just  a  minute,  young  man." 

Stiles  turned. 

"Don't  you  sell  that  place  until  you  see  me 
about  it." 

Stiles  could  not  resist  the  temptation.  "Do  I 
understand  that  you  want  an  option  on  it?" 

The  effect  on  the  judge  was  galvanic.   Mentally 


28  CRATER'S   GOLD 

speaking,  he  put  his  hand  over  his  pocketbook 
with  a  frightened  air. 

"Me?   No.    But  you  better  see  me." 

"Judge,  you're  awfully  good,"  replied  Stiles, 
"but  I  wouldn't  think  of  putting  you  to  any  trou- 
ble. This  Baumgarten  seems  like  a  very  decent 
fellow.  He's  a  great  friend  of  Eksberger,  the  well- 
known  theatrical  man." 

The  paper-knife  dropped  with  a  crash.  "Who 
did  you  say?"  asked  the  judge. 

"Charles  Eksberger,  the  well-known  theatrical 
man." 

The  judge  sat  and  stared,  his  face  growing  redder 
than  ever. 

"That  feller?"  he  almost  shouted.  Then  he 
rose  to  his  feet  and  came  nearer  to  Stiles.  "Young 
man,"  he  said,  "take  my  advice  and  you'll  leave 
that  Eksberger  strictly  alone." 

' '  Good  heavens !' '  thought  Stiles.  ' '  What  in  the 
world  has  Eksberger  got  to  do  with  this  little  hole 
in  the  woods?  What's  the  matter  with  him?"  he 
asked,  boldly. 

The  judge's  reply  seemed  irrelevant,  but  it 
might  be  highly  relevant,  as  coming  from  the  judge. 

"You  come  to  me  when  you  want  to  sell,"  he 
commanded,  gruffly. 

"Thanks,"  replied  Stiles,  and  with  this  he 
escaped.  Not  a  word  about,  "My  lad,  while  you 
are  here  your  home  is  with  us."  Not  even  a  hint 
of  country  roast  and  apple  dumplings.  Stiles  went 
back  with  relief  to  the  comparative  geniality  of 


CRATER'S    GOLD  29 

the  express  office,  where  he  was  greeted  fraternally, 
although  a  bit  reverently,  by  the  youth  in  office. 

"They  won't  let  me  take  it,"  announced  the 
latter,  in  a  disappointed  voice  clear  across  the 
dirty  room.  "There's  no  pouch  goes  over  this  line 
and  they  won't  let  me  handle  it.  They  wanted  to 
know  what  it  was." 

With  the  authority  of  the  whole  express  com- 
pany behind  him,  the  boy  guilelessly  expected  to 
have  his  personal  curiosity  satisfied,  but  Stiles  saw 
no  reason  for  this. 

"If  they  won't  take  it,  what  difference  does  it 
make  to  them  what  is  in  it?  You  didn't  give  them 
my  name,  did  you?" 

The  boy's  face  fell.  He  tried  to  lie,  but  couldn't 
quite  make  it. 

"They  had  to  know,"  he  confessed. 

"They  did,  did  they?"  said  Stiles,  darkly;  but, 
to  the  boy's  disappointment,  he  went  out  without 
another  word. 

Leaving  his  melodrama  aside,  however,  it  struck 
Stiles,  as  he  walked  up  the  dusty  road  from  the 
station,  that  ten  thousand  dollars  belonging  to 
Baumgarten  or  anybody  else  was  not  the  safest 
thing  to  have  in  a  country  house  half  a  mile  from 
the  nearest  neighbor.  Unless  he  wished  to  take 
Pullar  into  his  confidence,  he  must  keep  the  money 
one  night  at  least,  but  he  meant  to  relieve  his  mind 
as  soon  as  possible.  At  the  post-office  he  got  a 
sheet  of  paper  and  wrote  a  letter  to  Eksberger,  the 
first  letter  in  history,  he  mused,  that  a  theatrical 


30  CRATER'S    GOLD 

producer  would  have  ever  received  from  a  news- 
paper man  who  did  not  have  a  play  that  he  wished 
produced. 

CHARLES  EKSBERGER,  ESQRE. 
INTERNATIONAL  AMUSEMENT  SYNDICATE, 
NEW  YORK  CITY. 

DEAR  SIR, — A  gentleman  named  Baumgarten,  who  says 
that  he  is  a  friend  of  yours,  called  at  my  house  yesterday  and 
unfortunately  dropped  a  pocketbook  containing  a  very  large 
sum  of  money.  As  I  had  not  previously  known  Mr.  Baum- 
garten and  as  he  has  not  returned,  would  you  kindly  give  me 
his  address  or  notify  him  where  the  money  is  to  be  found? 

Yours  very  truly, 

ANDREW  STILES. 

In  a  day  or  two,  having  had  experience  with 
the  managerial  manner,  Stiles  foresaw  that  he 
would  get  an  answer  signed  by  some  underling 
named  Sam  something  or  Al  something  or  Abe 
something.  He  had  often  wondered  why  an  as- 
sistant to  a  theatrical  manager  never  has  a  com- 
plete first  name,  unless  it  is  something  pithy  like 
Max  or  Leo,  but,  pending  an  answer  to  this  grave 
problem,  and  also  to  his  note,  he  went  to  the  hard- 
ware-store and  purchased  the  largest  revolver  in 
the  show-case. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MRS.  FIELDS,"  shouted  Stiles,  when  he 
reached  his  house,  "do  I  look  like  a 
burglar?" 

His  reception  at  the  hands  of  Judge  Tyler,  and 
not  his  revolver,  was  on  his  mind,  but  during  the 
past  few  days  he  had  found  a  tepid  amusement  in 
shooting  unexpected  and  unrelated  questions  like 
this  at  his  housekeeper.  The  truth  was  that  he 
had  not  yet  made  up  his  mind  whether  he  had  to 
deal  with  a  genuine  humorist  or  a  half-wit.  His 
housekeeper's  answer  left  him  still  in  doubt. 

"I've  never  seen  any  burglars,"  she  said.  The 
subject  left  her  completely  cold  and  she  turned  to 
something  important. 

"Young  Pullar  has  been  here  again." 

"Pullar?"  asked  Stiles.  "Did  he  say  what  he 
wanted?" 

But  Mrs.  Fields,  having  done  her  part,  had 
turned  her  back  and  was  gone.  She  did  not  hear 
him  or  she  did  not  want  to.  Either  was  likely. 

The  cause  of  the  visit,  however,  must  have  been 
of  more  importance  to  Pullar  than  it  was  to  her, 
for  about  an  hour  after  Stiles  had  finished  his 


32  CRATER'S    GOLD 

dinner  the  lights  of  his  car  made  a  Ben  Greet  effect 
on  the  shrubbery  outside  the  windows  and  Pullar 
himself  came  stomping  up  on  the  piazza.  He  came 
in  without  knocking,  and  Stiles  motioned  a  chair, 
but  Pullar  stood  there,  irresolute,  his  cap  in  his 
hand,  his  hair  rather  tousled.  Pullar  had  on  a 
dinner  jacket  now,  his  shirt-front  showing  under  a 
big  fawn  polo  coat.  He  stood,  blinking  his  eyes  at 
the  lamp,  but  something  seemed  very  much  on  his 
mind. 

"Stiles,"  he  burst  out,  "did  you  find  a  pocket- 
book  here  to-day?" 

For  answer,  Stiles  took  the  package  from  his 
pocket  and  undid  the  wrappings.  In  his  relief, 
Pullar  almost  collapsed  and  he  actually  did  sink 
into  a  chair. 

"Thank  Heaven!"  he  exclaimed.  "You  can 
guess  how  that  makes  me  feel." 

He  took  the  leather  case  and  Stiles  noticed  that 
he  put  it  in  his  pocket  without  any  motion  to 
count  the  money. 

"A  very  poor  business  man,"  was  his  mental 
comment,  "but  a  very  fine  gentleman." 

Stiles  himself  crushed  the  wrapping-paper  into 
a  ball  and  shied  it  in  the  general  direction  of  the 
fireplace.  "I  thought  it  was  Baumgarten's,"  he 
explained.  "I  was  sending  it  back  to  him." 

No  answer  came,  and,  looking  around,  Stiles 
saw  that  Pullar  was  getting  redder  and  redder. 

"It  is  Baumgarten's,"  he  said.  "Or  rather,  it 
was." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  33 

"Was?"  thought  Stiles,  but  he  added,  aloud, 
"I  ought  to  tell  you.  I  saw  what  was  in  it — how 
much  was  in  it,"  he  corrected,  a  second  later. 

The  confession  did  not  affect  Pullar  in  the  least. 
He  seemed  hardly  to  care.  "Why,  of  course!"  he 
agreed,  absently.  "What  else  could  you  do?" 

In  spite  of  his  lucky  recovery,  Pullar  seemed 
almost  as  ill  at  ease  as  before,  and  Stiles  found 
himself  forcing  the  conversation. 

"I  was  out  on  a  search  for  our  friend  when  you 
called.  Is  it  too  much  to  ask  whether  Baumgarten 
knows  that  you — that  this  was  lost?" 

Pullar  shook  his  head  without  looking  up.  "A 
check  for  the  whole  amount  went  to  him  this 
morning." 

Stiles  whistled.    "This  morning?   I  thought—" 

At  last  Pullar  looked  up.  He  was  very  boyish, 
yet  very  likable  in  his  confusion.  "I  wasn't  acting 
for  Baumgarten — then.  I  told  him  I  would  at 
first  and  he  left  this  with  me.  He  wanted  to  clinch 
it  at  once.  Then  I  saw — then  I  talked  with  certain 
parties,  and  I — I  thought  it  best  not  to  act  for 
him." 

He  paused,  uncomfortable,  but  he  seemed  to 
be  getting  at  what  he  really  had  on  his  mind. 
Stiles  let  him  take  his  time,  but  studied  the  young 
man  sharply,  while  Pullar  himself  looked  down  at 
the  floor.  A  queer  combination,  this  Pullar,  quite 
a  lot  of  the  milord  and,  here  and  there,  a  strange 
bit  of  the  yokel — his  rough  hands,  for  instance,  and 
his  way  of  flushing  whenever  he  had  to  say  any- 


34  CRATER'S    GOLD 

thing  important.  Stiles  wondered  whether  there 
were  men  like  that  in  all  country  towns.  He  gath- 
ered not.  It  was  not  his  idea  of  the  rural  type. 
Still  Pullar  seemed  struggling  to  talk,  but  diffident 
about  getting  at  it,  and  Stiles  burst  off  on  another 
line.  People  always  had  interested  him  more  than 
things. 

"What  in  the  world  do  you  people  do  with 
yourselves  up  here — the  evening  clothes  and  all 
that?  Not  but  what  I  like  it." 

Pullar  came  out  of  his  abstraction  to  smile. 
"We  do  that,"  he  said.  "In  the  country  you  can 
be  quite  a  gentleman  on  nothing  at  all." 

Stiles  raised  his  eyebrows  in  surprise.  Not  very 
much  of  the  yokel  about  this  young  man,  except 
always  his  hands,  and  those  might  be  largely  fish- 
ing and  grease  from  the  engine.  Pullar,  however, 
was  not  to  be  diverted  from  the  idea  which  he  was 
attempting  to  express,  no  matter  how  much  it 
made  him  struggle. 

"Look  here,  Stiles,"  he  broke  out  at  last,  "if 
you  want  to  do  this  thing  without  Baumgarten1 
you  can.  There's  quite  a  little  money  round  the 
countryside — places  where  you'd  never  guess  it. 
I'm  not  good  for  much  myself,  just  a  little,  but  the 
people  know  me." 

Stiles  was  caught  by  surprise.  What  thing?  He 
was  just  as  much  in  the  dark  as  he  had  been  be- 
fore, but,  by  quick  control,  he  managed  to  look 
judicious  and  masterful.  Pullar  was  not  as  diffi- 
cult to  deceive  as  Baumgarten,  and,  for  that  rea- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  35 

son,  Stiles  was  not  so  anxious  to  deceive  him. 
Still,  until  he  knew  what  he  was  really  talking 
about  he  thought  it  best  to  look  as  if  he  knew 
everything.  Thus  he  sat  quietly  looking  ahead  and 
drawing  on  his  cigar  sagely.  And  it  was  Baum- 
garten's  cigar,  too!  Pullar  carried  his  pipe  and 
auxiliary  engines  in  his  dinner  jacket,  just  as  he 
did  in  his  tweeds.  He  got  them  all  out,  one  by  one. 

"Wait  a  minute,"  he  said.  "I  left  my  motor 
running." 

When  he  came  back  he  took  off  the  polo  coat 
and  puffed  out  his  rank  tobacco.  Stiles  found  a 
man  in  a  dinner  jacket  smoking  tobacco  that 
smelled  like  a  navvy's  rather  horsey  and  quite 
Pickwickian.  He  wasn't  so  sure  that  he  didn't  want 
to  live  in  the  country,  after  all. 

"Of  course,"  said  Pullar,  "we  couldn't  pay  the 
earth." 

"No,  I  imagine  not,"  replied  Stiles.  What  un- 
der heaven  was  all  this  nonsense  about,  anyway? 
But  he  still  appeared  judicious  and  masterful  and 
gazed  straight  ahead. 

"I  suppose,"  began  Pullar  again,  "that  you 
wouldn't  want  to  set  a  figure?  I  mean  absolutely 
in  confidence?" 

Stiles  puffed  again  and  then  looked  at  Pullar 
with  a  dry  smile.  "My  dear  fellow,"  he  said, 
"under  the  circumstances,  isn't  that  asking  a  good 
deal?" 

Pullar  flushed.  "Of  course  I  didn't  mean — "  he 
Durst  out,  apologetically 


36  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Oh,  not  at  all,  not  at  all,"  Stiles  calmed  him. 
He  was  talking  purely  at  random,  but  he  thought 
of  something  more  that  might  sound  well  in  that 
place  and  he  added : 

"Of  course  you  see  how  I'm  placed.  You  can 
hardly  blame  me." 

"Hardly,"  agreed  Pullar.  He  shook  his  head. 
"It's  a  funny  business,  isn't  it?" 

"Some  aspects  of  it  are,"  replied  Stiles,  sagely. 
He  lit  another  cigar.  It  was  one  of  his  own,  and 
he  had  to  admit  that  Baumgarten's  were  better. 
Suddenly  he  said,  "I  took  the  precaution  of  buying 
a  gun  to-day." 

Pullar  looked  up  with  almost  a  start.  Stiles  could 
not  help  noting  how  oddly  his  expression  was  that 
of  Baumgarten  in  the  afternoon.  Then,  just  as 
Baumgarten  himself  had  done,  he  made  an  attempt 
to  pass  it  off  lightly. 

"Oh  yes,"  he  said,  recollecting,  "because  of  the 
money." 

"Of  course,"  replied  Stiles,  but  "what  else?" 
was  the  thought  that  leaped  to  his  mind. 

Would  somebody  please  say  one  sane  word 
about  what  all  these  starts  and  suggestions  could 
mean?  He  thought  of  the  judge  and  his  sudden 
anger,  and  resolved  to  try  the  same  lead  on  Pullar. 

"By  the  way,  Pullar,  what  do  you  know  about 
Charles  Eksberger?" 

It  was  an  utter  chance  shot,  but  Pullar  again 
took  his  pipe  from  his  teeth  and  looked  at  him 
open-mouthed. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  37 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  Eksberger  has 
been  here  already?" 

Stiles  smiled.  "No,  I  didn't  say  that  he  had.  I 
just  asked  you  what  you  knew  about  him.  He  and 
I  are  having  a  little  correspondence." 

Pullar's  answer  was  perfectly  honest:  "I  don't 
know  as  much  as  I'd  like  to." 

"Neither  do  I,"  Stiles  would  have  liked  to  reply, 
but  he  could  not  allow  himself  any  luxuries  in  this 
conversation  and  he  said  nothing — just  continued 
to  look  masterful — the  business  man  over  the 
directors'  table. 

Having  discovered  that  all  that  he  had  to  do, 
apparently,  was  to  shoot  out  any  amazing  sentence 
that  came  into  his  head,  Stiles  was  eager  to  play 
this  game  indefinitely,  but  Pullar  got  up  hurriedly. 
The  honest  fellow  was  ridiculously  like  a  little  boy 
who  had  discovered  something  and  can't  wait  to 
tell  it  to  somebody.  That  was  the  yokel  in  him. 
But  tell  it  to  whom  ?  Stiles  wondered,  after  he  was 
gone. 

Stiles  felt,  indeed,  when  Pullar's  car  had  thrown 
its  white  lights  on  his  shrubbery  and  then  had 
swerved  its  long  beam  down  the  main  road,  that 
he  had  done  a  hard  day's  work.  He  let  himself 
back  into  his  chair  with  a  sense  of  manual  labor 
behind  him  instead  of  a  series  of  talks  in  which  he 
had  felt  like  a  masquerader. 

Stiles  had  laughed  at  Baumgarten,  and  laughed 
at  the  judge;  he  had  laughed  at  Pullar  and  had 
laughed  at  himself,  but  he  ceased  to  laugh  as  he 


38  CRATER'S   GOLD 

sat  in  his  chair,  with  no  one  but  himself  to  guess 
at  his  thoughts,  and  tried  to  make  head  or  tail  of 
the  whole  affair. 

The  very  fact  that  every  one  was  so  mysterious 
made  it  too  good  to  be  true.  They  were  all  too 
melodramatic,  too  childish.  If  they  had  laughed 
and  joked  and  patted  him  on  the  back  and  pre- 
tended that  they  did  not  want  anything  he  would 
have  been  on  his  guard,  he  would  have  suspected 
that  they  were  really  up  to  some  mischief.  But 
this  starting  and  staring! 

"Good  heavens!"  he  thought,  "some  one  will 
come  in  next  and  begin  to  babble  about  the  missing 
pay-pers." 

That  wasn't  such  a  bad  idea  in  itself.  He  would 
look  for  old  papers,  and,  if  he  didn't  find  any,  one 
could  always  write  them  one's  self.  They  would 
make  proper  furniture  for  such  a  house  as  this — a 
rude  diagram  and  a  compass  and  "half-way  between 
the  old  tree  and  the  big  rock  the  gold  is  buried." 

Then,  as  usual,  his  natural  cynicism  drowned 
his  own  whims.  Great  Scott!  If  a  man  got  as 
maudlin  as  this  after  living  three  weeks  in  the 
country,  what  would  he  become  in  three  years? 
No  wonder  Pullar  blushed  and  stammered  every 
time  he  tried  to  talk. 

He  stood  up  to  turn  down  the  lamp,  but,  as 
he  rose  from  his  chair,  he  heard  a  thud,  and,  look- 
ing down,  saw  his  new  pistol  lying  on  the  floor 
where  it  had  slipped  from  his  hip  pocket.  He 
picked  it  up  and  held  it  musingly. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  39 

"Yes,"  he  agreed  with  himself,  "there  is  no 
doubt  about  it.  The  next  act  in  the  farce  is  cer- 
tainly to  hear  soft  footsteps  at  night  and  find  that 
my  desk  had  been  rifled.  'Rifled,'  I  am  sure,  is 
the  word." 

And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  is  just  what  he 
did  hear — soft  footsteps  at  night.    Preposterous, 
as  he  realized,  but  it  seemed  to  be  so. 
4 


CHAPTER  V 

'"THE  footsteps  proved  on  investigation  to  be 
•*•  those  of  the  deaf  and  antique  housekeeper, 
Mrs.  Fields,  looking  very  peaked  and  very  un- 
pleasant in  a  flannel  wrapper,  but  why  she  should 
choose  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  be  nosing 
around  a  cold  attic  was  a  thing  of  which  Stiles 
demanded — and  obtained — an  explanation.  It 
was  an  affair  of  an  extra  quilt,  an  adventure  on 
which  it  would  be  impossible  to  cast  any  discredit. 
On  the  contrary,  Stiles  commended  her  (to  deaf 
ears)  for  the  first  wholly  sane  conversation  to 
which  he  had  listened  that  day,  but  he  had  to 
admit  that,  in  spite  of  himself,  she  had  given  him 
an  uncomfortable  moment. 

The  sleeping-rooms  of  the  old  house  were  in  far 
better  shape  than  the  living-rooms,  for  it  was  in 
their  bedrooms  that  old  country  families  did  them- 
selves proud.  Stiles  had  a  bedroom  which  ap- 
proached the  regal — no  common  affair  of  white- 
washed plaster  and  plaited  rag  rugs;  it  was  a 
heavy  spot  in  which  the  one-plane-above-the- 
neighbors  idea  had  really  come  into  its  own.  He 
had  gone  to  sleep  mocking  himself  for  even  enter- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  41 

taining  the  idea  that  he  ought  to  have  a  gun,  and 
had  awakened  to  hear  footsteps. 

The  affa.ir  had  had  one  pleasing  feature  for 
Stiles  in  that  it  had  proved  that  he  did  really  have 
some  physical  bravery,  a  quality  which  he  had 
previously  neither  doubted  nor  boasted,  merely 
one  to  which  he  had  never  given  much  thought. 
It  had  simply  been  a  matter  of  making  sure  that 
he  really  heard  footsteps  and  not  a  loose  shutter, 
and  then  he  had  found  himself  on  his  feet  with 
wit  even  to  remark  that  the  floor  was  cold.  He 
discovered,  to  his  interest  (being  now,  in  a  way, 
tied  up  with  the  mystery  business)  that  he 
searched  the  whole  first  floor  with  a  perfect  calm 
which  increased,  on  the  second  floor,  to  a  cer- 
tain sporting  zest  and,  on  the  third,  to  downright 
eagerness. 

When  he  reached  the  attic  to  hear  unmistakable 
sounds  and  even  to  see  a  strange  humping  shape,  he 
found  that  he  recognized  instinctively  that  the 
sounds  were  friendly  and  the  shape,  although  not 
identified,  yet  something  wholly  legal.  He  had,  of 
course,  some  start  when  he  called  and  received  no 
answer;  then,  realizing  that  Mrs.  Fields  was  deaf, 
he  went  up  and  put  a  hand  on  the  shape,  supposing 
that  it  must  be  she,  as  it  was,  quilt  and  all. 

A  feature  of  it  that  occurred  to  Stiles  afterward 
was  that  Mrs.  Fields  had  not  been  startled  at  all. 
Either  there  was  something  very  corsair  in  her 
nature,  or  long  years  of  housekeeping  in  windy 
houses  had  made  her  blunt  to  surprise.  She  merely 


42  CRATER'S   GOLD 

put  the  quilt  which  furnished  her  alibi  over  her 
arm,  walked  down  the  stairs  ahead  of  him,  and 
said  good  night  at  the  door  of  her  room  in  a  manner 
which  had  a  dash  of  the  debonair  in  it.  As  a  rough 
outline  for  a  scene  it  had  elements  but,  just  the 
same,  in  the  morning  Stiles  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  see  whether  anything  really  had 
been  done  to  his  desk,  by  Mrs.  Fields  or  by  any 
one  else.  To  date,  nothing  had,  but,  as  afternoon 
rolled  around,  Stiles  surmised  that  it  might  be 
just  as  well  to  go  out  and  look  over  his  hundred 
acres,  for  up  to  that  time  he  had  taken  them 
largely  on  faith,  merely  basked  in  the  majesty  of 
their  possession.  If  there  really  were  any  oil- 
wells  or  gold-mines  about  he  would  know  just 
what  to  say  to  the  next  caller.  He  also  took  the 
precaution  of  leaving  a  brisk  business  man's  no- 
tice with  the  housekeeper. 

"Mrs.  Fields,  if  any  millionaires  or  such  like 
come  along  to  buy  the  place,  don't  make  a  deal 
until  I  return." 

Then,  of  course,  he  had  to  shout  the  revised 
version: 

"If  any  one  comes  while  I  am  gone,  just  ask 
them  to  wait.  If  they  can't  wait,  tell  them  to 
leave  their  money  in  the  big  jar  beside  the  clock." 

"Not  on  the  study  floor,  like  the  last  gentle- 
man?" asked  Mrs.  Fields,  grimly. 

"Bully  for  you,  Fieldsie,"  exclaimed  Stiles,  but 
not  within  range  of  her  aural  powers,  limited  as 
they  were. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  43 

As  might  be  supposed,  few  oil-fields  were  found 
by  the  young  master  of  the  old  Crater  place.  His 
hundred  acres,  he  discovered,  ran  heavily  to  sand- 
bank. On  every  excuse,  the  sand  jutted  out  from 
the  dry  brown  grass  of  the  upland  pastures,  the 
only  relief  being  crooked  gray  fences  which  divided 
one  field  from  another.  In  vain  Stiles  searched  for 
"seepings"  of  oil  under  rocks  or  for  "color"  of 
gold  in  the  gravel  of  the  one  little  brook  which  ran 
through  the  place.  The  only  part  of  the  estate 
which  really  came  up  to  his  eye  was  a  green  little 
marsh  through  which  the  brook  ran  and  a  small 
plantation  of  birches  which  surrounded  the  house. 
Crashing  his  way  out  from  the  underbrush  of  the 
latter,  he  entered  the  house  through  the  kitchen, 
to  be  met  by  Mrs.  Fields  with  an  excited  smile  and 
a  clean  apron,  the  true  barometer  of  alien  presence. 

"They've  come,"  she  whispered. 

" Who've  come?" 

"The  people  to  buy  the  place." 

Stiles  searched  her  countenance,  but  there  was 
no  trace  of  guile.  She  really  meant  it,  and  Stiles 
was  excited.  From  the  form  of  her  words,  he  fore- 
saw a  purchasing-party  in  force.  Hitherto  he  had 
talked  only  with  individuals.  Like  as  not  he  might 
find  a  corporation  assembled,  gavel  and  all. 

His  study,  in  fact,  did,  at  first  glance,  give  the 
appearance  of  being  densely  populated,  a  sort  of 
afternoon-tea  effect,  which  impression  resulted 
probably  from  the  fact  that,  of  the  two  people  who 
actually  were  waiting  in  the  shabby  little  room, 


44  CRATER'S   GOLD 

both  were  extremely  well  dressed  and  one  was  a 
woman.  A  slender  and  amiable  young  man  in  a 
gray-checked  suit  rose  at  Stiles's  entrance,  with 
a  pleasant  smile,  a  frank,  winning  smile.  He  was 
red-haired  and  rather  Celtic  in  face. 

"Mr.  Stiles,"  he  said,  "I  don't  know  whether 
you  know  me.  My  name  is  Eksberger.  This  is 
Miss  Fuller." 

The  young  woman,  in  a  garden  hat  and  a  limp 
silk  sweater,  nodded  to  him  good-humoredly  from 
the  rattan  rocking-chair  in  which  she  was  in- 
stalled. She  had  very  large,  very  dark  eyes  and 
a  wistful  smile,  but,  while  good-natured,  the  world 
had  not  much  left  to  tell  her.  For  the  minute, 
however,  Stiles  was  busy  trying  to  believe  that  this 
really  was  Charles  Eksberger.  Curious  that  he  had 
lived  in  New  York  for  fifteen  years,  picturing  this 
man  as  a  fat,  gross  creature  with  a  white  waist- 
coat and  tilted  cigars. 

Eksberger,  meanwhile,  stood  watching  Stiles 
with  an  easy,  amused  expression  which  Miss  Fuller 
reflected. 

"I  have  often  heard  of  you,"  said  the  theatrical 
man.  "You  wrote  the  account  in  the  Sun,  did 
you  not,  when  the  Hippodrome  elephants  went 
on  a  hunger  strike?  I  was  speaking  of  you  just 
the  other  day  to  Baumgarten." 

Stiles  was  surprised  and  looked  it. 

"He  said  you  were,  but  I  thought  he  was  lying." 

"You  would,  wouldn't  you?"  agreed  Eksberger, 
pleasantly. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  45 

There  came  a  long  pause,  but  the  most  amiable 
kind  of  a  pause,  and  Eksberger  did  not  so  much 
break  it  as  end  it. 

''You  don't  mind  if  I  ask,  do  you,  if  you  still 
have  Baumgarten's  money?" 

"Did  you  tell  him  about  it?"  asked  Stiles. 

"To  tell  the  truth,  I  didn't, "confessed  the  young 
man.  "It  would  have  been  a  pity,  just  yet." 

"And  that's  lucky,  too,"  confessed  Stiles,  "be- 
cause, just  after  I  wrote  you,  I  found  that  Baum- 
garten  himself  did  not  drop  the  money,  but  the 
local  real-estate  man.  It  seems  that  Baumgarten 
had  left  it  with  him." 

"Then  Stuffy— " 

"That's  what  we  call  him,"  explained  Miss 
Fuller,  coming  into  the  conversation  for  the  first 
time,  although  she  had  been  a  quite  satisfactory 
part  of  the  wise  en  scdne. 

"Then  Stuffy  doesn't  know  that  it  was  lost  at 
all?"  asked  Eksberger.  "He's  still  got  that  coming 
to  him?" 

"He  has,  if  anyone  chooses  to  tell  him." 

"Better  and  better,"  laughed  Eksberger.  "I'll 
tell  him  myself."  He  turned  to  Miss  Fuller. 
"Don't  you  get  it?  Stuffy  running  around  sweat- 
ing blood  when  he  learns  that  a  hick  real-estate 
agent  lost  all  that  money?"  He  turned  back  to 
Stiles  quickly.  "You  said  that  it  was  a  lot  of 
money,  didn't  you?" 

"Ten  thousand  dollars,"  replied  Stiles. 

"Rich!"  shouted  Eksberger.    "Rich!" 


46  CRATER'S    GOLD 

He  mused  a  moment,  then  looked  at  Stiles 
shrewdly. 

"Baumgarten  wanted  to  buy  your  place,  didn't 
he?" 

Stiles  rather  hesitated. 

"Yes,  he  did,"  he  confessed.  He  felt  that  he 
ought  not  to  confess  it,  but  this  nice  young  man 
had  a  way  of  carrying  him  with  him.  "But  the 
funny  part  of  it  was,"  he  explained,  "that  when 
Pullar  —  that's  the  agent,  nice  boy,  too  —  lost 
Baumgarten's  money,  he  had  come  up  here,  not 
in  Baumgarten's  interest,  but  in  his  own,  or  rather 
for  other  parties — people." 

"He  wanted  to  buy  it,  too?"  asked  Eksberger, 
quizzically.  For  the  first  time  his  face  lost  that 
genial  smile. 

"Yes.  I  have  had  several  offers  for  the  place," 
replied  Stiles.  He  felt  justified  in  including  his 
uncle's  best  friend. 

' '  Lately  ? ' '  asked  Eksberger. 

"Since  Baumgarten." 

"Well  what  do  you  know  about  that?"  asked 
Eksberger.  As  usual,  he  turned  to  Miss  Fuller  for 
audience. 

Stiles  watched  the  smile  slowly  die  on  the  young 
man's  face.  Five  minutes,  perhaps,  at  the  most, 
had  elapsed  since  he  had  come  into  the  room,  yet 
he  felt  as  if  they  all  had  been  laughing  at  jokes  in 
common  for  years.  He  realized  that  if  these  people 
had  any  ulterior  motives  he  would  be  as  clay  in 
such  pleasant  hands. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  47 

"By  any  chance,  do  you  want  to  buy  the  place 
yourself?"  he  asked,  mildly. 

"Me?"  asked  Eksberger,  surprised.  He  blinked 
his  eyes  nervously,  then,  as  if  the  thought  had 
never  occurred  to  him  before,  but  as  if  he  found 
it  not  uninviting,  he  added:  "I  don't  know. 
Why?" 

"Because,"  explained  Stiles,  "if  you  don't,  you 
are  the  first  man  who  has  come  here  who  hasn't." 

Eksberger  blinked  his  eyes  still  more,  then 
changed  to  a  quieter  tone. 

"Do  you  mind  telling  me  just  what  really  did 
happen?  Of  course  I  know  that  Baumgarten  came 
tumbling  up  here  and  made  you  violent  cash 
offers.  He  always  shouts  cash,  always  waves  cash. 
What  then?  You  don't  mind?" 

"Not  at  all,"  replied  Stiles,  and  he  really  didn't 
mind,  although  he  wondered  vaguely  if  he  ought 
to  mind,  if  he  were  losing  a  million  or  so  by  not 
minding.  "But  first,"  he  said,  "will  you  tell  me 
who  Baumgarten  is?" 

"Oh,  Baumgarten's  a  damn  fool!"  replied  Eks- 
berger. That  seemed  to  cover  it,  and  Stiles  picked 
up  the  thread  of  his  narrative. 

"Well,  Mr.  Baumgarten  appeared  one  day  and 
tried  to  get  me  to  sell  the  place,  but,  as  it  happened, 
I  didn't  want  to  sell.  He  tried  to  get  me  to  set  a 
price,  any  price,  and  went  away  very  unhappy 
because  I  wouldn't.  He  had  already  been  to  see 
Pullar,  but  apparently  thought  he  could  do  the 
business  better  himself." 


48  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"He  would,"  said  Miss  Fuller. 

"So  then,"  explained  Stiles,  "Pullar  himself 
came  round  and  learned  what  had  happened.  That 
evening  he  came  again,  but  this  time  it  appears 
he  was  not  acting  for  Baumgarten,  but  for  a  per- 
son or  persons  unknown — local  talent  presumably." 

Eksberger  looked  at  Miss  Fuller. 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  he  asked,  triumphantly. 

Miss  Fuller  nodded,  but  a  bit  impatiently.  Her 
dark  eyes  were  all  for  the  rest  of  the  story. 

"So  that,"  Stiles  explained,  "was  the  time  I 
found  it  was  he  who  had  dropped  the  money ;  but, 
in  the  mean  time,  I  had  written  to  you,  supposing 
that  Baumgarten  had  dropped  it  himself." 

"But  why  to  me?"  asked  Eksberger,  quickly. 
"Oh  yes,  yes.  He  had  told  you  that  I  had  spoken 
of  you  and  you  thought  he  was  lying." 

"He  left  me  under  the  impression,"  explained 
Stiles,  "that  when  you  and  he  were  not  in  each 
other's  company  it  was  an  empty  day  for  you 
both." 

Eksberger  looked  at  Miss  Fuller  and  they  both 
smiled. 

"That's  Stuffy  all  over,"  said  the  former.  ' ' Did 
he  also  let  you  know  how  close  he  was  to  Klaw 
and  Erlanger  and  David  Belasco?" 

"No,"  confessed  Stiles.  "He  seemed  to  think 
that  you  would  make  the  biggest  impression  on  my 
rural  mind." 

"And  how  does  the  matter  stand  now?"  asked 
Eksberger. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  49 

"It  stands  just  where  it  stood  before,"  replied 
Stiles.  "Baumgarten  wants  to  buy  the  classic  old 
ruin,  Pullar  wants  to  buy  it  for  persons  unknown, 
and  an  old  friend  of  my  uncle's,  who  looks  like 
Washington  Irving  and  talks  like  the  villain  in 
"Way  Down  East,'  is  putting  in  a  cautious  feeler 
or  two  on  his  own  behalf.  And  I  forgot  to 
say,"  added  Stiles,  "that  everybody  concerned — 
Baumgarten,  Pullar,  and  Washington  Irving — 
all  go  into  convulsions  every  time  I  mention  your 
name." 

"And  raise  their  bids?"  suggested  Eksberger. 

"Each  according  to  the  manner  of  his  kind," 
acknowledged  Stiles.  "Baumgarten  talks  about 
raising  the  ante,  blind;  Pullar  urges  me  to  keep 
the  property  in  local  hands;  and  Washington 
Irving  warns  me  against  your  soft,  city  ways." 

Eksberger  had  taken  a  seat  in  the  worst  of  the 
chairs,  and  at  this  he  lay  back  and  roared,  slapping 
his  knee. 

"Better,  and  better,  and  better!"  he  laughed. 
"And  you,"  he  added,  suddenly,  "haven't  an  idea 
what  the  whole  thing  is  about?" 

"N-no,"  Stiles  confessed,  "I  haven't  the  slight- 
est idea." 

He  had  not  meant  to  confess  it  at  all,  but,  under 
Eksberger's  clear  eye,  had  done  it  before  he  could 
stop  himself. 

"Of  course,"  he  added,  to  save  his  sophistica- 
tion, "there  are  already  rumors,  I  suppose,  that 
there  is  oil  on  the  land,  or  gold,  or  both." 


So  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Of  course,"  agreed  Eksberger,  soberly.  He  sat 
thinking,  as  if  uncertain  where  to  begin,  and  then 
he  added,  slowly : 

"Well,  the  long  and  painful  story  is  just  this 
and  no  more." 

He  paused  suddenly  and  remarked: 

"Of  course  there  is  the  possibility  that  I  may  be 
lying  to  you  myself." 

"I've  still  got  the  place,"  replied  Stiles,  grimly. 

Miss  Fuller  threw  him  an  appreciative  glance. 
Eksberger  laughed. 

"Anyway,  this  is  what  happened.  Three  or  four 
days  ago  we  were  motoring  through  here — Miss 
Fuller  and  I — and  I  noticed  this  place  and  won- 
dered about  it.  Looked  as  if  some  old  country 
squire  had  lived  here,  sometime.  Just  wondered, 
that's  all.  Then  we  went  to  the  village  and 
stopped  for  lunch — white  house.  Know  it?" 

"Place  with  'Welcome'  on  the  mat?" 

"That's  the  place,"  replied  Eksberger.  "Almost 
in  tears  because  you  try  to  spend  some  money 
there.  They  had  another  guest,  too — all  of  one — 
cigar-drummer  or  something  of  the  sort.  Knew 
me  by  sight.  Pointed  me  out  to  the  local  youth. 
'Know  who  that  is?  That's  Charles  Eksberger — 
owns  all  the  moving  pichurs.'  You  could  see  'em 
gather  in  ones  and  twos.  Then,  I  suppose,  my 
chauffeur  threw  out  his  chest  a  little  in  the  garage. 
He's  got  to  have  some  compensation  for  holding  a 
hard  job. 

"Then,  of  course,  one  or  two  village  cutups 


CRATER'S   GOLD  51 

strolled  up  to  me — 'Nice  day,  Mr.  Eksberger,'  and 
all  that.  'How  do  you  find  the  roads?'  You  know 
the  stuff.  So,  just  to  make  talk,  I  asked  one  man, 
I've  forgotten  who — it  might  have  been  your 
friend  the  real-estate  man — I  asked  who  owned  the 
old  yellow  place  with  the  cupola. 

"They  told  me  the  owner  had  just  died  and  the 
place  was  on  the  market,  and  I  said,  'You  don't 
tell  me.  How  much  do  they  want  for  it?'  What 
else  could  I  say?  Then  I  added,  'Fine  place,'  or 
something  like  that.  Then  they  said  that  it  be- 
longed now  to  a  man  named  Stiles,  reporter  in 
New  York.  So  I  said,  'Not  Andy  Stiles?'  just  as 
if  you  and  I  were  bosom  pals,  'My  old  friend  Andy 
Stiles?'  I  says.  Then  I  thought  I'd  string  'em  a 
bit .  '  What '  s  it  worth  ? '  I  says.  '  Possibilities  in  that 
place.'  Do  you  get  me  now?" 

"I  think  I  begin  to,"  replied  Stiles.  "But  where 
does  Baumgarten  come  in?" 

"I'm  getting  to  him,"  answered  Eksberger,  "but 
before  we  were  one  mile  out  of  town  I  said  to  Miss 
Fuller— didn't  I,  Rose?— I  said,  'I'll  bet  that 
already  it  has  spread  all  over  town  that  I  have  got 
my  eye  on  that  place  to  make  moving  pictures. 
Next  thing  I'll  be  hearing  from  real-estate  agents.' 
It  wasn't  mind-reading.  It  happens  every  time  I 
ask  my  way  around  a  small  town;  but  I  never 
thought  it  would  be  as  good  as  this." 

"But  Baumgarten?"  hinted  Stiles. 

"Oh  yes,  Baumgarten.  Say,  do  you  know  what 
is  the  ambition  of  every  Jew  who  makes  money  in 


S2  CRATER'S   GOLD 

New  York?  I'm  a  Jew  myself,"  he  added,  by  way 
of  aside. 

"Not  really!"  interrupted  Miss  Fuller. 

Eksberger  smiled.  "That  wasn't  necessary,  was 
it?  Every  Jew  who  makes  money  in  the  clothing 
business — " 

"Then  I  was  right,"  interposed  Stiles.  "That's 
what  I  guessed." 

"Did  you  really?"  asked  Eksberger,  interested. 

"It  wasn't  hard,"  suggested  Miss  Fuller,  dryly. 

"As  it  happens  in  his  case,"  continued  Eks- 
berger, "it  is  art  novelties,  but  they  are  all  the 
same.  Baumgarten's  one  dream  is  to  be  a  theatri- 
cal man.  Wants  to  be  pointed  out  in  cafes." 

"And  not  just  at  country  hotels,"  remarked 
Miss  Fuller,  sweetly. 

Eksberger  flushed. 

"Have  mercy,  Rose,  have  mercy!  Anyway, 
Baumgarten  has  been  making  my  life  a  burden — • 
Charlie  this  and  Charlie  that — until,  that  night, 
after  we  got  back  to  the  city,  I  was  thinking  of 
how  the  hicks  had  tumbled,  and  so  I  said  to  my- 
self, 'I'll  bet  this  wise  guy  is  just  as  big  a  hick  as 
they  are.'  " 

"'Sam,'  I  says  to  him." 

"He's  got  a  good  name  for  the  show  business," 
suggested  Stiles. 

Eksberger  looked  up  quickly. 

"I'll  tell  you  something  about  that,  sometime," 
he  remarked.  "'Sam,'  I  says,  'I  saw  something 
good  up  in  the  country  to-day;  fine  old  place, 


CRATER'S   GOLD  53 

badly  run  down,  but  it's  simply  a  gem.'  Then  I 
told  him  just  where  it  was  and  said,  'And  who  do 
you  suppose  owns  it?  Andy  Stiles.  You  know 
Andy,  of  course.  Just  snapped  it  up.  Don't  know 
what  he  means  to  do  with  it,'  I  says,  looking  all 
the  time  as  if  I  did,  'but  he's  a  wise  bird,  that  boy 
is. '  Have  you  ever  noticed  that  in  the  show  busi- 
ness it  is  p?-rt  of  the  game  to  know  everybody  and 
know  them  by  their  first  name?  'Now  what  do 
you  think  the  rascal's  up  to  ?'  I  asked  Stuffy. 

"Sheer  rot,"  explained  Eksberger.  "But  all 
you've  got  to  do  in  the  show  business — they're  all 
half  crazy — is  to  nod  your  head  and  talk  to  them 
in  a  half  whisper — " 

"And  tap  their  knee  from  time  to  time,"  sug- 
gested Stiles. 

"Yes,"  agreed  Eksberger,  "and  give  the  impres- 
sion, 'Now  this  is  just  between  you  and  I.  There's 
not  many  people  that  know  it,  but  this  is  straight 
stuff,  inside  dope.'  It  wouldn't  matter  if  you  told 
them  that  the  Kaiser  had  opened  a  foundlings' 
home,  anything  will  do,  just  so  you  say  it  in  a 
husky  voice  and  nod  your  head— and  tap  their 
knee — that's  a  good  line,  by  the  way. 

"So  that,  in  brief,"  explained  Eksberger,  "is 
what  I  did  to  old  Stuffy.  Was  very  careful  to  say 
that  I  didn't  want  the  place  myself.  I  said  to 
Rose  afterwards — didn't  I,  Rose? — I  said,  'I  bet 
that  old  slob  will  run  up  to  Eden  or  whatever  they 
call  it  and  want  to  buy  that  place  ahead  of  me.' 
By  the  way,  when  did  he  come?" 


54  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Yesterday,"  reckoned  Stiles,  surprised  himself 
to  realize  that  it  was  so  recently. 

Eksberger  slapped  his  knee  again  and  turned  to 
Miss  Fuller. 

"Can  you  beat  it?"  he  asked. 

"So  there  you  are,"  he  concluded  to  Stiles,  tri- 
umphantly. "There  you  have  the  whole  business. 
Baumgarten  wanting  it  because  he  thinks  I  want 
it,  and  your  agent  chap  wanting  it  because  he 
thinks  that  both  of  us  want  it,  and  all  the  hicks 
wanting  it  because  they  think  the  three  of  us  want 
it.  It's  a  yell,  that's  what  it  is!" 

He  positively  beamed  at  Stiles  as  if  he  had  done 
him  the  favor  of  his  life  in  exploding  his  bubble, 
and  not  until  that  moment  had  Stiles  realized  that 
he  had  not.  Then  it  came  to  him  ruefully. 

"And  here  I  was  spending  the  money  already." 

Eksberger's  face  completely  sobered.  He  was  a 
great  boy,  after  all,  and  he  had  a  great  boy's  amaz- 
ing sympathy. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  he  exclaimed,  "you  should 
worry.  You  don't  think  I'm  going  to  spoil  the 
farce,  do  you?  Keep  'em  coming.  Let  'em  bid 
and  then  let  it  go  to  the  best  of  them.  I  only  hope 
that  it's  Baumgarten  that  gets  stung.  Say,"  he 
continued,  with  a  sort  of  feverish  enthusiasm, 
"don't  you  know  that  every  man,  woman  and 
child  in  town  will  know  that  I  have  been  here, 
ten  minutes  after  I  have  gone?" 

"Ye-es,"  replied  Stiles,  slowly. 

It  was  really  funny  that,  although  he  had  been 


CRATER'S   GOLD  55 

the  skeptic  of  skeptics  about  his  own  gold-mine, 
yet,  now  that  some  one  had  agreed  with  him  that 
it  was  only  pyrites,  he  was  almost  tearful. 

"To  tell  the  truth,  this  is  just  about  what  I  sup- 
posed had  happened,  but  every  one  was  so  myste- 
rious that  I  looked  forward  to  the  missing  papers 
and  the  shots  in  the  night." 

"And  the  old  squire's  daughter?"  asked  Miss 
Fuller. 

"I  hadn't  got  to  her  yet,  but  she  was  about 
due,"  answered  Stiles.  "And  now  look  at  this  dun 
reality." 

At  that  very  minute  a  chauffeur's  cap  appeared 
in  the  doorway. 

"Mr.  Eksberger,  the  car's  gone!" 

"Gone?   Gone  where?"  exclaimed  Eksberger. 

"Gone,"  insisted  the  man,  wildly,  talking  so  fast 
he  chattered.    "I  only  left  it  a  minute  to  go  to  the 
back  door  for  a  drink  of  water,  and  now  I  come 
back  and  it's  gone.    It's  stolen!" 
5 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  big  foreign  car  was  gone,  right  enough, 
but  Eksberger  ought  to  have  known,  and  Stiles 
ought  to  have  known,  and,  most  of  all,  the  chauf- 
feur ought  to  have  known,  that  the  car  could  hardly 
have  been  stolen  without  starting  the  engine  and 
that  the  engine  could  hardly  have  been  started 
without  rousing  some  one  in  the  house  fifty  feet 
away. 

When  one's  own  ten-thousand-dollar  car  is  gone, 
however,  one  does  not  think  as  logically  as  that. 
The  natural  picture  conjured  up  was  one  of  thieves 
in  organized  bands  reporting  to  some  head  thief 
in  New  York.  Under  this  delusion,  or  one  like  it, 
Eksberger  was  running  around  crying  to  be  led  to 
a  telephone,  and  Stiles  was  explaining  frantically 
that  none  existed,  when  Mrs.  Fields  came  in  with 
the  bland  announcement : 

"The  gentleman's  car  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
hill." 

" Bottom  of  the  hill?"  roared  Eksberger.  "Who 
took  it  there?" 

Mrs.  Fields  looked  at  him,  puzzled. 

"Took  it?"  she  replied,  blankly.  "Nobody  took 
it.  It  went  by  itself." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  57 

"Am  I  crazy  or  who  is?"  demanded  Eksberger, 
and  Stiles  himself  stared.  It  began  to  dawn  on  him 
that,  in  the  person  of  Mrs.  Fields,  he  was  housing 
what  might  be  called  a  parochial  mind.  Sandy 
hillsides  that  contained  oil  untapped  and  motor- 
cars that  lounged  off  by  themselves  were  appar- 
ently not  spectacular  to  her.  He  wondered  what 
would  be.  He  knew — an  unexpected  visitor  during 
her  ironing-hour. 

Investigation  proved,  however,  that  Mrs.  Fields 
had  stated  a  simple  fact.  The  car  was  indeed  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill,  but  Mrs.  Fields  had  neglected 
to  add  that  it  was  also  in  the  ditch,  astride  the 
brook,  and  upside  down.  Those  facts  had  possibly 
not  seemed  to  her  of  any  importance,  or  perhaps, 
becoming  bored,  she  had  not  waited  to  see  that 
part  of  the  performance.  Yet  there  they  found  the 
beautiful  foreign  colossus,  its  four  wheels  in  the  air, 
its  belly  to  the  blue,  looking  uncomfortably  nude 
and  crablike. 

Just  what  had  happened  it  was  only  possible 
to  guess,  for  Mrs.  Fields  had  been  the  only  witness, 
and  her  story,  although  unimpeachable,  was  valu- 
able for  little  except  its  color.  She  had  been  hang- 
ing out  clothes  at  the  side  of  the  house,  table- 
cloths, to  be  exact,  when  she  chanced  to  look  up 
and  saw  the  big,  empty  car  rolling  solemnly  away 
down  the  hill.  As  nearly  as  one  could  gather,  she 
had  stood  and  watched  it  without  even  much  curi- 
osity. It  must  have  been  quite  a  picture,  the  gaunt, 
wind-blown  old  woman  and  the  big,  empty  car, 


S8  CRATER'S  GOLD 

both  non-committal,  and  each,  as  it  were,  with  a 
sardonic  grin.  The  supposition  was  that  the  brakes 
had  not  been  properly  set;  the  chauffeur  advanced 
the  theory  that  they  had  been  tampered  with; 
but  the  only  certain  fact  was  that  the  car  was  now 
in  the  brook,  exciting  comment  among  the  frogs 
and  the  tadpoles. 

A  rural-delivery  carrier  came  along  as  the  four 
of  them  stood  there  looking  down  at  the  wreck. 
Presumably  he  asked  whether  there  had  been  an 
accident,  for  Stiles  heard  the  chauffeur  retort: 

4 '  Oh  no !  We  did  it  on  purpose !' ' 

After  that  it  took  the  promise  of  considerable 
capital  and  the  most  flattering  attitudes  on  the 
part  of  Miss  Fuller  to  appease  the  delivery  man 
and  persuade  him  to  carry  the  good  news  to  Ghent. 
Half  an  hour  later  appeared  two  swart  fellows  from 
the  local  garage  to  shake  their  heads  pessimistically 
and  give  it  as  their  opinion  that  nothing  short  of 
a  crane  would  put  the  car  on  its  feet.  A  crane  was 
not  to  be  had  short  of  Felsted,  but  they  left  with 
the  promise  to  bring  it  the  following  morning. 
The  chauffeur  began  listlessly  to  salvage  the  cush- 
ions, and  Stiles  suggested  that  he  be  left  alone 
with  his  grief. 


CHAPTER  VII 

OATHER  stimulated  by  the  excitement  of  en- 
A\  tertaining  his  first  guests,  Stiles  dressed  for 
dinner  somewhat  more  elaborately  than  usual,  and 
hurried  down  to  the  unpainted  piazza,  but  Miss 
Fuller  was  there  before  him.  Of  baggage  she  had, 
of  course,  none,  but  she  had  done  marvels  with 
what  she  carried  in  her  hand-bag,  or  rather  what 
Eksberger  carried  in  his  pockets  for  her.  As  they 
had  gone  to  their  rooms,  Stiles  had  heard  funda- 
mentals of  beauty  culture  frankly  demanded  and 
had  seen  them  delivered. 

Throughout  the  whole  excitement  Miss  Fuller 
had  remained  a  silent  and  unmoved  spectator. 
Stiles  had  imagined  that  few  things  of  this  life 
could  move  Miss  Fuller,  but  now  she  displayed 
more  animation.  She  greeted  her  host  with  a 
friendly  smile  and  he  walked  across  to  her  side. 

"I  presume,"  she  remarked,  without  prelim- 
inaries, "that  you  are  rather  curious  to  know  just 
why  Charlie  Eksberger  and  I  are  traveling  around 
together." 

Stiles  had  not  thought  of  it  at  all. 

"Am  I  expected  to  be  curious?"  he  asked. 


60  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Miss  Fuller  laughed,  but  she  looked  at  him  with 
a  quick  and  appreciative  expression. 

"Not  unless  you  want  to  be,"  she  replied,  "but 
people  usually  are." 

She  proceeded  to  state  the  case  in  what  prob- 
ably seemed  to  her  a  nutshell. 

"We  are  not  married  and  we  are  not  engaged. 
I  may  add  that  we  did  not  expect  to  be  shipwrecked 
for  a  day  or  two.  Does  that  explain  matters?" 

"Perfectly,"  replied  Stiles. 

But  apparently  it  did  not,  for  Miss  Fuller  was 
still  a  bit  meditative. 

"I  suppose  it  looks  funny,"  she  said,  a  little 
apprehensively. 

"My  dear  lady,"  exclaimed  Stiles,  "there  are 
no  trains  to-night  and  Mr.  Eksberger  cannot  leave 
the  car.  What  else  could  you  do?" 

But  Miss  Fuller  was  wistful. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  slowly.  "Suppose 
some  one  should  hear  of  it." 

Stiles  looked  at  her  curiously  and  with  perhaps 
a  little  more  than  curiosity.  It  was  odd  to  see  this 
girl,  who  looked  as  if  she  might  tap  one  on  the 
shoulder  and  say,  "I'm  wise,  kid,  I'm  wise," 
become  wistful  about  the  proprieties. 

"After  all,"  he  reassured  her,  "there  is  always 
Mrs.  Fields.  I  am  sure  it's  all  right." 

"What  is  all  right?"  asked  Eksberger,  coming  at 
that  moment  out  of  the  front  door.  He  was  look- 
ing at  something  that  he  carried  in  his  hands  and 
spoke  absently. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  61 

"I  was  telling  Mr.  Stiles,"  explained  Miss 
Fuller,  "that  we  were  not  married,  or  anything." 

"Were  you?"  answered  Eksberger.  "What  did 
you  tell  him  that  for?" 

There  is  something  Turkish  about  theatrical 
magnates.  They  speak  tersely  to  their  women. 
Then,  as  if  the  only  subject  that  interested  him 
were  the  object  that  he  carried  in  his  hand,  he 
burst  out : 

"Will  you  tell  me  what  the  devil  this  is?" 

He  held  in  his  hand  a  sheet  of  paper,  yellow 
with  age,  but  still  robust  with  the  quality  of  the 
days  when  paper  was  paper.  At  his  query,  Miss 
Fuller  crowded  up  to  his  shoulder  and  Stiles  looked 
on  from  beyond  her.  Eksberger  read  like  a  little 
boy  in  the  primer  class,  for  the  writing  was  shaky 
and  faint : 

'"This  in  ye  year  of  our  Lord,  ye  one  thousand, 
seven  hundred  and  ninety-first  and  in  ye  year  of  this 
republic  ye  fifteen — ' 

"I  suppose  he  means  the  fifteenth,"  suggested 
Eksberger.  "Say,  this  is  ancient,  this  yee  stuff. 
You  know  that's  what  they  used  to  say  for  'the.' ' 

"You  don't  say,  Charlie,"  replied  Miss  Fuller, 
sarcastically.  "You  don't  say." 

"I  was  just  telling  you,  that's  all,"  retorted 
Eksberger.  "That's  the  way  it  is  written  on 
Shakespeare's  tomb." 

"Suppose  you  give  us  a  little  more  of  this 
strange  tale,"  suggested  Miss  Fuller,  and  Eks- 
berger, without  rancor,  went  on  reading  slowly : 


62  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"'From  dust  man  was  formed  and  to  dust  he  m- 
turneth.  Y*  treasure — ' 

"Y.T.  treasure,"  said  Eksberger,  looking  up. 
"What  the  deuce  is  Y.T?" 

"'That,'"  suggested  Stiles,  "on  the  principle 
of 'ye 'for 'the.'" 

"By  George!  I  believe  you're  right!"  exclaimed 
Eksberger,  excitedly.  The  thrill  of  the  antiquarian 
was  already  on  him. 

"'Yaf  treasure  which  man  amasseth  unto  himself 
in  this  earth — '  I  wonder  why  he  didn't  say  'yis 
earth'  if  he  says  'ye'  and  'yat.'" 

"Who  is  'he'?"  asked  Miss  Fuller,  languidly. 
"Well,  let  me  find  out,  can't  you?"  replied  Eks- 
berger, now  lost  in  his  studies. 

"Oh,  pardon  me,  pardon  me!"  pleaded  Miss 
Fuller,  hastily.  "Where  did  you  get  this  quaint 
conceit?" 

"I  found  it  under  my  bed." 
"Do  you  always  look  under  the  bed  when  you 
find  yourself  in  a  strange  room?" 

"Oh,  for  the  love  of  Mike,  Rose!"  protested 
Eksberger.  "It  wasn't  really  under  the  bed.  It 
was  sort  of  under  the  bed." 

He  continued  with  his  paleography. 
"'Yat  treasure  which  man  amasseth  unto  himself 
in  this  earth,  he  shall  leave  in  ye' — there  he  goes 
again — 'he  shall  leave  in  ye  earth  and  now,  I, 
Nicholas  Caton' — no,  it's  Nicholas  Crater — 'now 
I,  Nicholas  Crater,  being  humbled  and  oppressed 
with  a  sense  of  wrong  doing  do  leave  in  this  earth ' — 


CRATER'S   GOLD  63 

See?  He  says  'this'  every  time.  That  must  be 
the  way  they  did — 'do  leave  in  this  earth  yat  treasure 
which  I  have  amassed  thereon.  But  as  by  mine  own 
toile  was  yat  treasure  amassed,  so  now  yat  I  have  re- 
turned it  to  ye  earth,  let  him  who  will,  digge  for  it  in 
ye  earth,  even  as  I  have  done. 

Signed  this  day, 

Nicholas  Crater. 

Ye  same  being  in  sound  body  and  mind.' t: 

Eksberger  looked  at  his  host  and  his  eyes  lit 
with  excitement. 

"Say,"  he  exclaimed,  "do  you  know  what  I 
think  this  is?" 

"No,  Mr.  Bones,"  answered  Miss  Fuller. 
"What  do  you  think  yat  is?" 

"Oh,  cut  it  out,  Rose!"  pleaded  Eksberger.  "I 
bet  this  is  an  old  manuscript." 

"No!"  breathed  Rose,  incredulously,  but  Eks- 
berger paid  no  attention  to  her.  Then  his  natural 
metropolitan  suspicion  of  everything  in  heaven 
and  earth  slowly  came  back.  He  looked  at  Stiles 
doubtfully. 

' '  Do  you  really  believe  that  there  can  be  some- 
thing valuable  hidden  around  the  place?" 

"Unfortunately,"  replied  Stiles,  "I  don't." 

Eksberger  looked  at  him,  puzzled.  Then  reluc- 
tantly he  looked  at  the  yellowed  paper. 

"But  who  was  this  gink — this  Nicholas  Crater? 
He  wouldn't  have  written  like  that  if  he  hadn't 
meant  something  by  it,  would  he?" 

"Probably  not,"  replied  Stiles,  "if  there  ever 


64  CRATER'S    GOLD 

had  been  any  such  man,  but  unhappily  there 
wasn't.  Nicholas  Crater,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  ex- 
ists only  in  my  own  imagination.  Of  that  antique 
document  the  author  stands  before  you." 

"You?  You  wrote  it?"  gasped  Eksberger,  about 
as  crestfallen  as  Stiles  had  been  at  the  exposure  of 
the  afternoon.  "But  what  for?" 

"Well,"  confessed  Stiles,  "with  Baumgarten  and 
Pullar  and  all  the  rest  of  them  playing  'Treasure 
Island'  and  'East  Lynne'  all  over  the  place  I 
thought  I  would  give  them  something  that  would 
really  keep  them  busy.  So,  in  a  dull  moment,  I 
composed  this  pretty  forgery  and  left  it  around 
where  any  enterprising  pryer  might  run  across  it. 
If  you  found  it  in  your  room,  among  the  sheets  and 
pillow-cases,  I  gather  that  some  little  pryer  must 
have  done  just  that  thing." 

But  Eksberger  looked  unconvinced. 

"But,  man,"  he  argued,  "it's  old.  The  paper's 
old.  The  ink  is  old." 

"Everything  in  this  house  is  old,"  replied  Stiles, 
"and  thin  and  wan  and  pale,  not  to  mention  eltrich 
and  eyrie.  The  paper  is  old  because,  naturally, 
one  does  not  put  old  wine  in  new  bottles.  I  tore 
it  from  a  book,  an  old  book,  to  wit  Goodholme's 
Domestic  Encyclopedia  of  Practical  Information,  an 
amazing  volume  which  fitted  my  ancestors  to 
cope  with  any  emergency  from  'angel  cake*  to 
'childbirth'  and  'fire-balloons.'  I  have  spent  hours 
with  it,  fascinated.  This  was  a  blank  page  in- 
tended for  'Additional  Receipts  and  Memoranda.' " 


CRATER'S   GOLD  65 

He  paused,  smiling,  but  Eksberger  still  appeared 
unconvinced,  while  Miss  Fuller,  standing  between 
them,  looked  first  at  one  and  then  at  the  other. 

"Will  you  please  tell  me,"  she  asked,  at  last, 
"just  who's  stringing  who?" 

"I  can  show  you  the  book,"  protested  Stiles, 
mildly. 

He  went  into  his  study  and  returned  with  a 
volume  which  was  large  enough,  at  least,  to  cover 
the  ground  he  had  mentioned.  At  the  back  he 
showed  a  rough  edge  where  a  page  had  been  torn 
out  and  into  which  the  edge  of  the  antique  docu- 
ment fitted  perfectly. 

"Well,  I'm  a  sucker,"  confessed  Eksberger,  and 
Miss  Fuller  quoted,  softly: 

'"All  you've  got  to  do  in  the  show  business — 
they're  all  half  crazy — is  to  nod  your  head  and 
talk  to  them  in  a  half  whisper  and  say,  "Now 
this  is  just  between  you  and  I." : 

Eksberger  took  it  good  humoredly. 

"I  didn't  make  any  exceptions  in  favor  of  my- 
self," he  answered,  but  Mrs.  Fields  rescued  him 
from  further  confusion  by  the  announcement  that 
"supper"  was  ready.  She  had  been  told  to  call  it 
dinner,  but  Stiles  had  known  at  the  time  that  she 
would  be  adamant.  He  submitted  to  the  inev- 
itable, and  well  he  might,  for,  although  a  supper 
in  name,  it  was  a  dinner  in  fact.  The  paper,  how- 
ever, was  still  uppermost,  and  Stiles  seized  the 
event  of  the  soup  to  ask,  in  rather  stern  manner: 

"Mrs.  Fields,  where  did  you  find  this  paper?" 


66  CRATER'S   GOLD 

The  moment  was  meant  to  be  impressive,  a 
strong  will  dominating  a  weak  one,  but  Mrs. 
Fields  again  failed  to  understand  the  part  which 
was  expected  of  her.  She  took  the  paper,  made  a 
motion  of  tapping  over  her  sunken  chest,  and  an- 
swered, "I  can't  read  it  without  my  spectacles." 

Stiles  tried  what  lawyers  call  "refreshing  the 
memory  of  the  witness." 

"Mr.  Eksberger  says  that  he  found  it  beside 
his  bed,"  he  shouted,  suggestively. 

Mrs.  Fields's  expression  became  one  of  complete 
understanding. 

"Oh,"  she  replied,  with  evident  relief.  "Then 
that's  where  I  dropped  it.  I  was  saving  that 
paper  to  give  it  to  Jedge  Tyler." 

"Judge  Tyler?"  asked  Stiles,  and  in  such  a  tone 
that  he  did  not  need  to  repeat.  It  did  not  upset 
Mrs.  Fields.  When  her  master  was  angry  and 
excited,  she  merely  thought  that  he  had  a  nice 
speaking  voice. 

"Yes,"  she  nodded,  in  reply  to  the  question. 
"Jedge  Tyler  told  me  to  find  all  the  papers  with 
old-fashioned  writing  and  bring  them  to  him." 

Tense  would  be  a  good  word  to  describe  the 
atmosphere  of  the  table  at  that  announcement. 
Alone,  Mrs.  Fields  stood  lax  and  dreamy,  her 
hands  rolled  in  her  apron.  Stiles  broke  the  long 
and  significant  silence. 

"When  did  the  judge  tell  you  that?" 

"Before  you  come,  when  he  was  here  to  wind 
up  the  settlement."  A  detail  of  far  greater  mo- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  67 

ment  came  to  her  mind.  "He  counted  all  the 
towels  and  all  the  sheets  and  put  them  down  in 
a  book." 

"Oh!"  answered  Stiles,  and  the  strained  air  of 
the  table  relaxed.  Mrs.  Fields  stood  ready  to 
answer  any  and  all  further  questions,  but  it  was 
only  as  an  afterthought  that  Stiles  thought  of 
one.  He  was  about  to  propound  it  when  Eksberger 
stopped  him.  With  the  brusque  air  of  one  who 
says,  "Here,  let  me  tend  to  this  woman,"  he  held 
up  his  hand  and  turned  to  Mrs.  Fields. 

"Did  Judge  What's-his-name— " 

"Tyler,"  supplied  Stiles. 

' '  Did  Judge  Tyler  take  away  any  old  papers  ?" 

But  Eksberger  had  not  yet  caught  the  knack  of 
talking  to  Mrs.  Fields. 

"How's  that?"  she  asked. 

Eksberger  repeated.  His  eye  was  bright  and  his 
manner  absorbed,  for  his  failure  of  the  afternoon 
had  only  succeeded  in  making  him  an  antiquarian 
for  life.  Henceforth  he  was  to  be  at  his  best 
among  the  ye's  and  yats.  He  put  his  lungs  into 
the  question. 

"Did  Judge  Tyler  take  away  any  old  papers?" 

Mrs.  Fields  smiled  dryly.  "Skads  of  'em,  al- 
most a  barrel." 

Eksberger  allowed  his  head  to  move  cautiously 
until  he  caught  Stiles's  eye,  and  the  two  men  looked 
at  each  other  significantly.  Suddenly  Stiles  had 
an  inspiration.  Taking  from  the  table  his  own 
Chattertonian  forgery,  he  handed  it  to  Mrs.  Fields. 


68  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Here,"  he  bellowed,  casually,  "you  might  as 
well  give  him  this." 

Eksberger  looked  at  him  in  applause,  and  Miss 
Fuller  beamed.  It  was  a  master  stroke,  the  hit  of 
the  day.  One  saw  the  villain  of ' '  'Way  Down  East' ' 
digging  by  lantern-light  to  find  the  treasures  of 
Nicholas  Crater.  One  saw  also  the  price  of  the 
farm  going  up. 

Mrs.  Fields  took  the  manuscript  without  marked 
elation,  but  Stiles  was  beginning  to  understand 
this  dark  mind.  The  housekeeper  turned  to  leave, 
but  Eksberger  was  the  real  Hawkshaw  of  the  party. 

"Did  the  judge,"  he  asked,  sharply,  "offer  you 
any  money  to  bring  the  old  papers  to  him?" 

The  housekeeper  turned  and  looked  at  him 
blankly,  and  all  three  of  them  there  at  the  table 
hung  anxiously  on  the  reply.  A  great  deal  de- 
pended on  the  words  of  that  old  woman.  She 
seemed  to  get  it  at  last  and  threw  up  her  head 
scornfully. 

"Money?    Him?" 


CHAPTER  VIII 

O  you  know  what  I  should  like  to  do?" 
said  Stiles  as  Eksberger,  Miss  Fuller,  and  he 
strolled  out  from  dinner  into  the  cool  fragrance  of 
the  summer  evening.  Mrs.  Fields,  as  a  witness, 
might  be  infantile,  but  as  a  cook  she  was  epic,  and 
the  atmosphere  of  the  moment  was  one  of  majestic 
content.  Eksberger,  one  presumes,  had  already 
made  the  remark  that  country  life  was  the  only 
life,  after  all,  that  he  wondered  why  any  one  lived 
in  the  city,  and  that,  just  as  soon  as  he  got  his 
affairs  in  shape,  he  was  going  to  buy  a  farm.  To 
this,  Miss  Fuller,  supposedly,  had  answered  with 
a  cynical  silence  (she  had  a  way  of  being  cynical 
silently)  for  Eksberger  had  been  heard  to  remark : 

"You  don't  believe  it,  Rose,  but  I'm  going  to 
surprise  you  all  one  of  these  days." 

"Do  you  know  what  I  should  like  to  do?"  said 
Stiles.  "I  should  like  to  go  down  and  see  that  old 
codger  and  find  just  what  he  has  got,  just  what 
he  is  up  to." 

"By  George!  we'll  do  it!"  Eksberger  caught 
the  spirit.  "You  send  for  a  car,  telephone  right 
away —  Oh,  damn!" 


70  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"We  might  walk,"  suggested  Stiles.  "It's  only 
two  miles." 

"We'll  walk  it,  then,"  said  Eksberger.  "Of 
course  he'll  deny  that  he  has  any  papers,  but  be- 
tween us  I  guess  that  we  can  make  the  old  skeeziks 
squirm."  Then  suddenly  he  paused  and  put  his 
hands  on  his  hips.  "Say,"  he  said,  "do  you  know 
what  we're  doing?  We're  actually  getting  to  be- 
lieve this  bunk." 

Stiles  hardly  smiled.  "That's  what  I  told  you. 
That  is  just  what  happened  to  me.  I've  got  so 
I'm  looking  for  footprints  under  the  windows  and 
expecting  to  have  bullets  just  graze  my  ear.  I 
told  you  that  I  expected  some  one  to  go  through 
my  desk.  And  they  have,  too,"  he  added,  "if  you 
count  Fieldsie." 

Eksberger  stood  shaking  his  head.  "Well,  any- 
way, what's  the  harm?"  He  burst  out,  with  a 
dubious  smile,  "Are  you  on?" 

"I'm  on,"  replied  Stiles,  and,  apparently 
as  an  afterthought,  Eksberger  turned  to  Miss 
Fuller. 

"How  about  it,  Rose?" 

' '  Mercy !' '  exclaimed  Miss  Fuller.  ' '  Has  it  come 
to  that?" 

"What  do  you  mean  has  it  come  to  that?" 
asked  Eksberger. 

"Nothing,"  replied  Miss  Fuller,  demurely. 

Eksberger  flushed  just  a  little  and  walked  ahead, 
but  Stiles  had  caught  the  girl's  eye  behind  the 
other  man's  back.  He  smiled  faintly,  but  she 


CRATER'S    GOLD  71 

smiled  broadly.  She  had  no  intention  of  keeping 
Eksberger  a  secret  from  the  world. 

At  the  gate  Eksberger  turned  and  waited  for  the 
others.  "I  wonder  if  he'll  try  to  lie  out  of  it,"  he 
speculated. 

In  Stiles  flashed  up  some  unsuspected  spark  of 
sectional  pride.  "I  don't  think  so,"  he  replied. 
"The  Pilgrim  fathers  have  left  behind  their  full 
quota  of  crabs,  but  very  few  downright  liars." 

It  was  still  wavering  daylight  when  the  judge's 
house  came  in  sight;  the  judge  himself  was  spray- 
ing a  hose  on  a  flower-bed.  With  his  ambassa- 
dorial whiskers  and  with  the  background  of  his 
old-fashioned  garden  he  formed  a  picture  which 
made  Miss  Fuller  exclaim,  "What  a  darling  old 
man!" 

' ' '  Darling '  is  good, ' '  commented  Stiles.  * '  Good 
evening,  Judge,"  he  added,  in  a  louder  tone. 

The  judge  looked  up  sharply.  "Good  evening," 
he  said.  He  threw  the  hose,  sputtering  and  writh- 
ing, on  the  grass,  and  came  forward  with  an  air 
which  was  not  ungenial. 

"Mr.  Stiles,"  he  said,  "they  tell  me  you've  sold 
your  place." 

"No,"  replied  Stiles,  "I  haven't  sold  it." 

The  judge  looked  at  him  a  moment,  then  tossed 
his  head. 

"Well,"  he  confessed,  "I  mistrusted  there  wa'n't 
anything  in  it.  They  was  telling  me  something 
about  your  getting  twenty  thousand  dollars  in 
one  express  package  from  this  Eksberger." 

6 


72  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Stiles  smiled.  "This  is  Mr.  Eksberger,"  he  re- 
plied. "He  can  tell  you  whether  I  did  or  not." 

The  judge  took  his  first  good  look  at  the  tall 
young  man.  "Air  you  Mr.  Eksberger?"  he  asked, 
in  amazement. 

Eksberger  nodded,  and  the  judge  at  least  was 
frank. 

"I  heard  considerable  about  you,"  he  said,  "but 
I  thought  you  was  a  Jewish  feller." 

All  three  of  his  visitors  laughed. 

"I  guess  you  never  saw  a  red-headed  Jew  be- 
fore," suggested  Eksberger. 

The  judge  thought  a  moment  before  committing 
himself.  "No,"  he  confessed,  "I  don't  believe 
that  I  have." 

The  judge  leaned  down,  turned  off  the  hose, 
and  deliberately  wiped  his  hands  on  the  grass. 
"I  was  coming  up  to  see  you  in  the  morning,"  he 
said  to  Stiles.  "I  wanted  to  ask  you  about  that 
paper." 

Behind  him,  Stiles  could  feel  Miss  Fuller's  sinis- 
ter merriment,  although  he  knew  instinctively  that 
her  expression  had  not  changed  an  atom.  Even 
Eksberger  seemed  to  have  a  twinkle  of  amusement. 

"Mis'  Fields  give  it  to  Jenkins's  boy  when  he 
went  by  with  the  milk  for  the  Boston  train,"  ex- 
plained the  judge,  "and  he  give  it  to  my  Harry 
up  to  the  store.  Come  in,"  he  continued,  hospi- 
tably. ' '  Come  in,  ma'am. ' ', 

The  hall  into  which  they  followed  him  was  dim 
and  musty,  and,  as  they  entered,  a  thin,  elderly 


CRATER'S   GOLD  73 

woman  with  a  guilty  air  snatched  something  in 
cloth  and  slipped  out  of  sight.  The  judge  pried 
open  the  door  of  the  parlor,  and,  in  the  open  door- 
way of  a  room  beyond,  another  thin,  elderly 
woman  with  a  guilty  air  snatched  something  in 
cloth  and  slipped  out  of  sight.  The  judge,  of 
course,  was  as  unconscious  of  them  as  he  was  of 
the  smell  of  cabbage. 

"I'll  git  a  light,"  he  said,  and  he  left  his  three 
guests  in  the  darkening  room,  not  so  much  seeing 
it  as  sensing  it,  the  small-paned  windows,  the 
white  wood  panels,  the  feel  of  plaited  rag  rugs 
underfoot,  and  the  chill  that  never  leaves  such 
rooms  even  in  summer.  Stiles  wondered  whether 
Eksberger  or  Miss  Fuller  had  ever  seen  such  a 
room.  He  could  make  out  their  outlines  in  the 
dusk,  standing,  staring,  not  in  the  least  amused, 
rather  timidly,  like  children  sent  with  a  note  to 
the  minister  and  waiting  for  the  answer.  In  a 
Broadway  restaurant,  Eksberger  would  have  been 
a  man  to  look  at  twice,  to  wonder  who  he  was  and 
then  ask  the  waiter;  in  the  big  foreign  car  with 
veils  from  her  hat,  Miss  Fuller  was  the  last  note 
in  languid  sophistication;  yet  here  in  this  musty, 
provincial  parlor  they  both  looked  suddenly 
crude,  almost  coarse-lined.  Stiles  wondered. 
There  must  be  something  in  the  Ten  Command- 
ments and  Plymouth  Rock,  after  all. 

The  judge  came  back  with  a  parlor  lamp,  an 
atrocious  thing  with  a  painted  globe,  which  he 
put  on  the  table,  bending  to  its  level  and  squint- 


74  CRATER'S   GOLD 

ing  his  eyes  as  he  turned  it  up.  It  brought  out 
the  shape  of  a  huge  gilt  mirror  and  a  crayon  por- 
trait of  a  woman  with  an  agate  brooch  and  hair 
parted  over  her  temples.  The  judge  took  from  his 
pocket  Stiles's  antique. 

"Just  what  was  it  you  wanted  me  to  do  with 
this?"  he  asked.  "Sit  down,  ma'am,  sit  down." 

Stiles  looked  shamefaced  at  Eksberger  and  then 
at  Miss  Fuller,  but  his  fellow-children  were  unable 
to  help  him  and  he  saw  that  he  must  lie  alone. 
"I  wondered  just  what  you  could  make  of  it," 
he  said,  weakly. 

"It  looked  like  an  antique  document,"  sug- 
gested Eksberger,  hopefully. 

"Humph!"  said  the  judge.  He  studied  the 
paper  he  held  in  his  hand,  and  then  balanced  a 
pair  of  steel-rimmed  glasses  on  his  nose.  "Where 
did  you  git  this?"  he  asked. 

Eksberger  and  Miss  Fuller  looked  eagerly  at 
Stiles.  They  were  expecting  great  things  of  him, 
but  Stiles  also  felt  that  they  were  both  slowly 
turning  against  him,  that  both  were  becoming 
distinctly  amused,  not  to  say  ribald,  at  his  ex- 
pense. 

"Why — it  was  lying  around  the  house,"  he  said, 
lamely.  That  at  least  was  literally  true. 

The  judge  studied  the  paper  further  and  with 
growing  scorn.  "Sounds  like  the  Bible,"  he  said, 
"but it  ain't."  Then  suddenly,  wholly  uncon- 
scious of  his  own  sarcasm,  he  added,  "Would  you 
like  to  see  some  reel  old  papers?" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  75 

It  was  Miss  Fuller  who  answered.  One  couldn't 
understand  why,  but  one  felt  unconsciously  that 
she  was  the  only  one  who  was  really  in  much  favor 
with  the  judge.  ' '  Oh  yes !  Can  we  ? ' '  she  asked. 

Without  a  word,  but  rather  snuffing  his  nose,  the 
judge  shuffled  out  of  the  room.  The  three  sat  in  a 
silence  which  Eksberger  summed  up  in  one  word, 
"Stung!" 

The  judge  came  back  with  a  small  packet  of 
folded  papers  done  up  with  a  bit  of  red  tape, 
papers  worn  and  spotted  and  heavy  and  brown  to 
the  color  of  gingerbread.  He  did  not  even  need  to 
set  them  down  on  the  table  to  make  the  pitiful 
forgery  of  Stiles's  look,  in  comparison,  as  a  modern 
chair  might  look  in  an  old  museum.  Eksberger's 
eye  danced.  Whatever  might  be  the  limitations  of 
this  man,  he  knew  the  real  thing  when  he  saw  it. 
The  judge  cleared  his  throat  with  a  disagreeable 
and  unconscious  thoroughness  and  untied  the  red 
tape.  He  took  the  first  crumbling  document  from 
the  top  and  rubbed  it  between  his  fingers. 

"Feel  that  and  then  feel  that,"  he  said,  picking 
up  the  apocryphal  manuscript  from  the  table.  All 
three  of  them  did  it  obediently,  and  all  three  ex- 
claimed respectfully  as  people  are  expected  to  do 
on  such  occasions. 

"That's  nothing  but  a  letter  wrote  by  Miss 
Tyler's  grandfather  when  he  was  in  London 
in  eighteen  hunderd  and  six."  The  judge  dis- 
carded carelessly  several  minor  papers  from  the 
packet  and  picked  out  the  one  he  wanted.  This 


76  CRATER'S   GOLD 

was  the  heaviest  and  the  largest  of  the  lot,  written 
on  parchment.  "This  is  a  commission  from  Gov- 
ernor Shirley  of  Massachusetts  for  my  grand- 
father's uncle  in  the  French  and  Injun  War.  We 
was  part  of  England  then.  He  was  massacreed  at 
Fort  William  or  Fort  Henry,  I  disremember  which. ' ' 

"Massacreed?"  repeated  Eksberger,  artlessly. 
"Who  by?" 

"The  French  or  the  Injuns,  one  or  the  other," 
answered  the  judge,  nonchalantly.  He  was  ab- 
sorbed in  looking  for  another  paper,  and  at  last 
he  found  it. 

"Here,  this  is  what  I  was  looking  for,"  he  said. 
"That  thing  of  yourn  claimed  to  be  wrote  in 
seventeen  ninety-one.  I  hain't  any  of  precisely 
that  date,  but  this  one  was  wrote  in  seventeen 
eighty-six  and  they  wrote  just  the  same  then. 
This  was  a  deed  for  some  land  up  Spicer  way." 
He  handed  out  the  creased  and  yellow  document, 
and  Eksberger,  the  antiquarian,  was  the  one  who 
took  it. 

"You  see  them  esses?"  asked  the  judge. 
"That's  what  I  wanted  to  show  you.  You  see  them 
esses  in  that  deed?  Some  of  them's  wrote  like  f's, 
but  they  ain't  f's,  they're  esses.  Now  you  look  at 
that  paper  you  sent  and  you'll  see  that  all  the  esses 
are  wrote  just  like  we  write  now.  The  minute  I 
see  that  paper,  I  says,  'That  was  wrote  sence  I 
went  to  school.'" 

But  the  antiquarian  in  Eksberger  had  already 
begun  to  feel  his  oats;  the  thrill  was  on  him. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  77 

"But  look  here,"  he  exclaimed,  completely  ab- 
sorbed in  the  real  antique.  "Here's  an  ess —  'By 
these  presents.'" 

The  judge  looked  over  his  glasses  at  the  word 
to  which  Eksberger's  finger  was  pointing. 

"That's  what  I  was  telling  ye,"  he  said,  testily. 
"It  was  only  when  the  ess  come  at  the  end  of  a 
word  or  when  two  esses  come  together.  Then 
they  wrote  the  second  ess  like  we  do  now.  They 
was  a  feller  brought  a  paper  into  the  Masons' 
lodge  one  night  that  he  claimed  was  three  hunderd 
years  old.  It  was  something  about  the  Catholics. 
I  ain't  no  Catholic,  but  the  minute  I  clapped  my 
eyes  on  it  I  says:  'That  paper  ain't  no  three  hun- 
derd years  old!'  You  know  why?" 

"Why?"  asked  Miss  Fuller,  nor  did  she  add, 
"Mr.  Bones." 

"Why?"  repeated  the  judge.  "Because  that 
paper  had  all  the  esses  wrote  like  f's.  And  sure 
enough  that  paper  was  wrote  in  Philadelphia  by  a 
bad  priest  or  somebody.  They  was  thousands  of 
copies  all  over  the  country.  They  was  quite  some 
talk  about  it  at  the  time.  Round  here  that 
wouldn't  have  fooled  nobody.  When  I  was  a  boy, 
half  the  old  people  in  this  town  was  still  writing 
that  way,  but  this  happened  in  California." 

"In  California?"  exclaimed  Stiles.  "Have  you 
lived  in  California?" 

"No,  I  never  lived  there,"  replied  the  judge,  as 
if  offended  that  he  had  been  asked.  "I  was  just 
there  in  'forty-nine." 


78  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"A  'forty-niner?"  suggested  Stiles,  with  sudden 
interest. 

The  judge  did  not  take  his  eyes  from  the 
paper  in  his  hands.  "No,"  he  replied,  absently, 
"I  wa'n't  no  'forty-niner.  I  was  in  the  navy." 

His  three  visitors  looked  at  one  another  and 
then  looked  at  the  judge.  By  silent  consent,  Stiles 
seemed  elected  to  speak. 

"Were  there  many  boys  from  this  inland 
country  in  the  navy  in  those  days?"  he  asked, 
tactfully. 

The  judge  put  down  the  paper,  picked  up  the 
bundle  of  other  papers,  and  began  running 
through  them.  "No,"  he  said,  as  if  the  matter 
did  not  interest  him,  "I  never  heard  of  any  ex- 
cept me.  I  wouldn't  have  be'n  in  the  navy  myself 
if  I  hadn't  be'n  shipwrecked." 

Eksberger  could  stand  it  no  longer.  ' '  You  were 
shipwrecked  ?  Where  ?' ' 

The  judge  shook  his  head  impatiently  and  be- 
gan running  through  the  papers  again.  "Hark!" 
he  commanded,  irritated.  "You  made  me  lose 
my  place.  Here  it  is."  He  took  a  paper  from 
the  packet  and  then  replied,  calmly:  "Where,  did 
you  say?  Oh,  on  the  Malay  Peninsula.  Not  a 
great  way  from  Singapore." 

Having  found  the  paper,  he  seemed  to  allow 
himself  some  interest  in  the  conversation.  His 
eyes  almost  twinkled  at  some  dead  recollection 
stimulated,  and  he  volunteered  of  his  own  accord : 
' '  But  that  was  a  long  time  ago.  My  father  thought 


CRATER'S   GOLD  79 

I  had  better  go  round  the  world.  He  didn't  want 
to  see  much  of  me  just  then." 

Miss  Fuller,  obviously,  was  the  only  one  who 
could  ask  the  delicate  question  after  that,  "What 
had  you  done  so  terrible?" 

The  judge  laughed.  He  really  did  like  Miss 
Fuller.  "Oh,  it  wouldn't  seem  so  terrible  now, 
but  he  was  a  very  strict  man.  You  see,  I'd  be'n 
throwed  out  of  Harvard  College. 

"You  just  wait  a  minute,"  added  the  judge, 
hastily,  and  he  shuffled  out  of  the  room.  "I 
thought  I  had  what  I  wanted  here,  but  it  wa'n't  the 
one." 

The  three  left  behind  looked  at  one  another. 

"Say,  do  you  get  it?"  whispered  Eksberger,  at 
last.  "And  here  us  boobs  came  down  here  to 
string  this  old  chap.  I  wonder  if  he  was  ever  in 
the  show  business." 

"Let's  ask  him,"  suggested  Miss  Fuller. 

"Holy  smoke!"  replied  Eksberger.  "If  we 
asked  him  that  we'd  probably  find  that  he  was 
the  first  Little  Eva." 

But  Stiles  was  the  philosopher  of  the  party. 
He  sat  silent  for  a  long  time,  and  then  he 
said,  "Do  you  suppose  it  would  do  that  to 
everybody?" 

"What  do  what?"  asked  Eksberger. 

' '  Living  in  the  country, ' '  replied  Stiles.  ' '  Think 
of  it — fired  out  of  Harvard,  shipwrecked  at  Singa- 
pore, in  California  in  'forty-nine — and  now  look 
at  him!" 


80  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"I  think  he's  an  old  darling,"  retorted  Miss 
Fuller,  loyally. 

"Oh,  sure!"  agreed  Eksberger,  "but  I  get  what 
you  mean,  Stiles.  I  was  wondering  that,  too. 
Ssht!  Here  he  comes." 

The  judge  came  shuffling  back  into  the  room. 
"I  couldn't  find  it,"  he  said,  "but  'twa'n't  of 
much  account." 

Eksberger  had  a  sudden  possession  of  mischief. 
"Judge,"  he  asked,  holding  up  the  forgery  which 
had  occasioned  this  evening  of  reminiscence, 
"what  do  you  suppose  that  this  really  is?" 

To  their  surprise,  the  judge  was  not  contemptu- 
ous, merely  pitying.  "Well,"  he  said,  slowly, 
"some  fool  wrote  that,  thinking  he  was  smart. 
You  see,  there  has  be'n  a  lot  of  nonsense  about 
that  old  house  of  yourn,  Mr.  Stiles.  Always  has 
be'n  ever  sence  I  can  recollect.  In  fact,  I  sup- 
pose it  has  be'n  that  way  ever  sence  the  murder.'* 

"The  murder!"  exclaimed  Miss  Fuller  and 
Stiles  in  chorus. 

"Well,"  replied  the  judge,  deprecatingly,  "least- 
ways that  was  what  it  was  called."  He  smiled 
and  went  through  the  motions  of  chuckling,  al- 
though he  did  not  make  a  sound.  "I  suppose,'* 
he  said,  "that  no  one  took  the  trouble  to  tell  you 
that  that  house  of  yourn  was  ha'nted." 


CHAPTER  IX 

O  you  know  how  I  feel?"  asked  Eksberger 
as  Stiles,  Miss  Fuller,  and  he  came  out  of 
the  judge's  house  into  the  soft  darkness  of  the 
early  June  night. 

Eksberger  (and  Stiles  himself  was  already 
catching  the  habit)  generally  prefaced  a  statement 
of  fact  by  a  demand  that  his  emotions  be  guessed 
at.  The  idea  was  that,  after  several  preposterous 
guesses,  he  could  spring  his  denouement  and  set 
them  all  right.  This  was  not  based  on  any  con- 
scious interest  in  psychology.  It  was  not  even  the 
traditional  managerial  love  of  being  an  oracle.  It 
was,  rather,  a  deliberately  cultivated  habit.  Like 
most  men  who  have  made  money  out  of  the 
theater,  Eksberger,  early  in  his  career,  had  dis- 
covered (to  his  amazement  at  the  time)  the  dra- 
matic and  consequently  financial  value  of  the  sim- 
ple experiences  of  the  average  human  mind.  So, 
like  most  men  who  have  seen  the  money  which  is 
made  from  unpretentious  plays,  he  was  continu- 
ally probing  his  emotions  with  the  hope  that 
there  might  be  a  million  dollars  in  them,  as  there 
had  been  for  this  or  that  happy  playwright.  His 
conversation  was  full  of  stories  of  men  who  had 


82  CRATER'S   GOLD 

made  thousands  from  a  single  catchword  overheard 
in  the  street  or  from  one  line  for  a  song. 

' '  Do  you  know  how  I  feel  ?"  he  demanded ,  but  in 
the  subduing  influence  of  the  June  darkness  no- 
body seemed  to  care  how  he  did  feel.  "I  feel,"  he 
said,  nevertheless,  "as  if  I  had  been  watching 
some  cracking  good  show  —  something  solemn, 
Ibsen  or  that  sort  of  stuff." 

Even  that  failed  to  draw  any  response,  but 
Eksberger  had  his  satisfaction  in  knowing,  from 
their  silence,  that  his  two  companions  felt  quite 
the  same  way.  The  apple  blossoms  were  just  com- 
ing into  their  maturity,  the  lilacs  were  at  the 
height  of  theirs,  and  as  the  trio  walked  slowly  up 
the  dirt  path  at  the  side  of  the  village  street,  the 
heavy  scents  in  the  velvet  darkness  might  have 
been  those  of  an  evening  in  southern  California,  in 
orange-blossom  time. 

After  Eksberger's  profound  confession,  none  of 
them  felt  much  inclination  to  talk,  and  Miss 
Fuller,  who  walked  between  the  two  men,  slipped  a 
hand  through  the  arm  of  each  and  drew  them  both 
to  her  snugly.  Stiles  found  it  rather  comforting. 

The  path  lasted  only  a  few  hundred  yards  and, 
at  its  terminus,  the  sketchy  street  lights  ended, 
too,  after  which  the  three  plunged  into  the  dark 
and  rutted  country  road  which  led  to  the  Crater 
place.  The  change  in  the  footing  seemed  to  lessen 
the  tension,  although  the  amazing  old  judge  was 
still  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  them  all. 

"What  was  that  war  he  spoke  about?"  asked 


CRATER'S   GOLD  83 

Eksberger,  suddenly.  "The  one  where  his  uncle 
or  some  one  got  killed?" 

"The  French  and  Indian?"  suggested  Stiles. 

"Yes,  that's  the  one.   What  war  was  that?" 

Stiles  rather  started.  The  date  was  only  ap- 
proximate in  his  own  mind,  but  the  event  itself 
had  been  a  corner-stone  of  his  education  at  one 
point  of  his  childhood,  just  as  the  story  of  Joseph 
and  his  brethren  had  been  at  an  earlier  point,  and 
the  battle  of  Salamis  at  a  later.  He  could  not 
remember  when  he  had  not  shuddered  at  Brad- 
dock's  defeat. 

"I  don't  remember  exactly  the  date,"  he  replied, 
"but  it  wasn't  a  great  while  before  the  Revolution." 

"The  Revolution?"  asked  Eksberger,  simply. 
"That  was  Sheridan's  ride  and  all  that,  wasn't  it?" 

Stiles  did  not  laugh.  It  rather  took  him  a 
moment  to  get  his  breath. 

"You're  thinking  of  Paul  Revere's  ride,  I  guess," 
he  suggested,  tactfully.  "They  seem  to  have  done 
a  lot  of  riding  in  the  old  days." 

But  Eksberger  was  too  genuine  in  his  thirst  for 
knowledge  to  avail  himself  of  the  opening. 

"No,"  he  insisted.  "There  was  a  Sheridan's 
ride,  wasn't  there?  Barbara  Fritchie  or  something 
of  the  sort?" 

Stiles  was  pinned  down  to  exactness  in  spite  of 
his  well-meaning  evasion. 

"But  that  was  a  hundred  years  later.  That 
wasn't  so  very  long  ago — in  the  Civil  War." 

"Oh,  sure,"  replied  Eksberger,  a  flood  of  light 


84  CRATER'S   GOLD 

bursting  on  him.  "I  get  you  now.  The  Civil 
War.  That  was  'The  Birth  of  a  Nation.'  I  know 
all  about  it  now.  Say,  can  you  guess  how  much 
money  that  picture  made?  I  wish  I  knew  myself 
and  had  a  chunk  of  it." 

He  shook  his  head  ruefully  that  he  had  not 
investigated  American  history  at  least  to  the  ex- 
tent of  owning  a  chunk  in  "The  Birth  of  a  Na- 
tion," but  his  mind  was  tenacious  and  he  pursued 
the  new  line  of  thought  as  avidly  as  he  had  pursued 
his  antiquarian  studies. 

"Then  Paul  Revere  was  in  this  French  and  Ind- 
ian war?  What  did  he  do?" 

If  Stiles  had  not  lived  fifteen  years  in  the  heart 
of  New  York,  he  would  not  have  believed  his  ears 
at  that  moment,  and,  as  it  was,  even  he  was 
startled.  If  he  ever  wanted  to  use  this  thing  as  a 
dinner  story,  he  knew  that  no  one  would  ever 
believe  him.  A  man  who,  to  a  partial  extent, 
controlled  the  destinies  of  the  American  stage,  a 
man,  at  any  rate,  who  wore  the  clothes  and  had 
the  habits  of  wealth  and  position,  a  man  whose 
verdict  was  feared  and  whose  judgment  respected 
by  some  of  the  best  wit  of  New  York,  did  not  know 
things  which  were  taught  to  six-year-old  tots  in 
the  little  red  school-houses  around  Eden.  The  bases 
of  society  crumbled,  but  still  he  managed,  in  an 
impersonal  voice,  to  give  a  rough  outline  of  Amer- 
ican history.  Nathan  Hale,  Eksberger  knew — be- 
cause some  one  had  written  a  play  of  that  name — 
"would  lose  money  to-day;  those  costume  plays 


CRATER'S   GOLD  85 

always  do."  Lincoln,  of  course,  he  had  heard  of, 
and  Grant,  of  popular  song  fame,  and  Washington 
in  connection  with  the  Delaware  episode;  but 
whether  Columbus  and  Napoleon  or  Columbus  and 
Oliver  Cromwell  were  contemporaries  was  a  mat- 
ter on  which  he  was  shady  in  the  extreme — said  he 
was. 

To  all  of  Stiles's  discourses  Miss  Fuller  listened 
with  polite  attention,  but  without  much  interest. 

"I  learned  all  those  things,  once,"  she  said,  "but 
I  was  never  any  good  at  remembering  dates." 

Like  most  women  who  dress  well,  Miss  Fuller 
regarded  ignorance  as  a  kind  of  virtue.  It  was  easy 
to  see  why.  Women  who  did  know  dates  and  that 
sort  of  thing  were  notoriously  dowdy.  Ergo !  Like 
all  women,  moreover,  those  who  dress  well  and 
those  who  don't,  she  felt  that  the  only  knowledge 
in  good  repute  was  that  which  came  from  innate 
instinct.  "Book  knowledge,"  they  say,  in  a  voice 
which  shows  that  it  is  the  last  source  of  wisdom 
to  be  taken  as  authoritative. 

Once  interested  in  a  thing,  however,  Eksberger, 
the  male,  was  a  hound  for  knowledge.  Like  a 
lawyer  in  a  careful  cross-examination,  he  drew  out 
from  Stiles  the  essential  facts  of  Miles  Standish  and 
John  Alden.  In  half  a  mile  they  had  almost 
reached  the  Missouri  Compromise.  It  was  thrill- 
ing to  Eksberger.  He  actually  felt  that  he  had 
touched  a  little-known  side  of  human  knowledge. 
He  would  tell  people  about  this  some  time.  The 
beauty  was  that  he  did  not,  from  first  to  last, 


86  CRATER'S    GOLD 

show  any  surprise  at  his  own  ignorance.  He  ques- 
tioned Stiles  simply,  as  one  questions  a  mining 
expert  or  an  aviator  or  a  man  who  has  been  to 
Tibet,  or,  in  fact,  any  master  of  a  remote  and  not 
very  useful  subject.  There  were,  of  course,  people 
who  went  in  for  this  Nathan  Hale  stuff,  and  they 
weren't  all  hicks,  either.  He  could  be  liberal. 
There  was  no  accounting  for  tastes.  But  now 
that  he  himself — a  practical  man — knew  about  it ! 
Just  wait !  There  might  be  a  play  in  that  French 
and  Indian  stuff,  a  screen  play,  that  is,  and  a  comic 
song  in  Cotton  Mather  and  the  witches,  something 
bringing  in  a  man  who  was  afraid  of  his  wife.  Just 
look  at  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  what  that  made!  It 
simply  coined  the  stuff! 

"  Cotton  Mather  was  a  wise  old  guy, 
He  burned  them  at  the  stake." 

A  refrain  something  like  that,  sung  by  a  good 
comedian  who  knew  how  to  get  it  over !  Nothing 
to  it,  boy,  nothing  to  it ! 

It  gave  Eksberger  the  joy  of  the  investigator, 
the  sense  of  having  plumbed  the  hitherto  un- 
plumbed.  He  had  a  headful,  and  without 
troubling  to  go  into  the  Mexican  War,  he  relapsed, 
after  half  a  mile,  into  silence,  but  full  of  thought — 
deep  stuff.  For  a  hundred  yards  or  so  nobody  said 
anything,  and  then  it  developed  that  depths  in 
Miss  Fuller's  nature  had  also  been  stirred. 

"Mr.  Stiles,  do  you  believe  in  ghosts?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  87 

It  needed  no  explanation  to  show  what  had 
started  the  question.  From  the  judge's  full  even- 
ing, Eksberger  had  come  away  with  Nathan  Hale 
under  his  arm,  Miss  Fuller  with  the  story  of  the 
Crater  ghost.  She  made  no  pretense  that  it  did 
not  worry  her.  It  was  not  a  flippant  question. 
The  girl  was  troubled. 

"Mr.  Stiles,  do  you  believe  in  ghosts?" 

Stiles  hesitated.  If  they  had  been  alone  he 
would  have  given  her  at  once  a  sincere  answer, 
for,  to  tell  the  truth,  he  had  thought  about  the 
question  more  than  once.  Who  has  not?  He 
stumbled  along  the  road  a  moment  or  two  and 
then  decided  to  do  it  anyway. 

"I'll  tell  you  frankly  how  I  feel  about  that.  I 
don't  see  how  a  man  can  be  a  Christian  and  be- 
lieve in  any  kind  of  spirits." 

The  minute  he  had  said  it  he  realized  his  mis- 
take, but  the  next  minute  realized  that  he  had 
not  made  any  mistake  at  all.  Eksberger  was  not 
a  Christian,  yet  curiously  he  did  not  realize  that 
he  was  not.  He  accepted  the  term  in  just  the 
sense  that  Stiles  had  used  it.  For  both  of  them, 
New-Yorkers,  Christian  had  become  synonymous 
with  "white  man."  It  meant  little  more  than  one 
who  lived  in  a  civilized  country.  The  tone  in 
which  Eksberger  voiced  his  next  question  showed 
Stiles  that  he  had  been  exactly  right. 

"What  do  you  mean  a  man  can't  be  a  Christian  ?" 

Just  as  Stiles  had  thought,  in  the  term  he  as- 
sumed himself. 
7 


88  CRATER'S    GOLD 

In  his  answer  Stiles  was  on  safe  ground.  The 
decalogue  was  Jewish  as  well. 

"We  are  told  in  the  Bible,"  he  said,  '"Thou 
shalt  have  no  other  gods  before  Me.'  If  you  be- 
lieve in  God  you  are  forbidden  to  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  any  other  spirit.  They  are  not  recognized, 
so  to  speak." 

Stiles  himself  had  gone  into  the  matter  farther 
than  this — Saint  Paul  and  "Ye  men  of  Athens," 
but  he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  elaborate  this 
far. 

"But  if  you  don't  believe  in  God?"  asked  Eks- 
berger.  His  tone  did  not  imply  in  the  least  that 
he  himself  did  not.  He  merely  had  picked  the 
possible  flaw  in  the  logic,  like  the  good  business 
man  that  he  was.  But  imagine  Miss  Fuller  ask- 
ing such  a  question  as  that  on  a  dark  night  on  a 
country  road  on  the  way  to  a  haunted  house! 
Miss  Fuller  drew  closer  to  Stiles,  if  anything,  and 
Stiles  gave  to  the  question  an  answer  that  was 
perfectly  devout  and  was  also  impeccable  theology. 

"If  I  didn't  believe  in  God,"  he  replied,  "I'd 
waste  mighty  little  time  with  any  other  spirit." 


CHAPTER  X 

'T'HE  story  which  Judge  Tyler  had  told  about 
•*•  the  old  Crater  place  had,  in  fact,  appealed  to 
Stiles  principally  for  the  quaint  precision  with 
which  it  was  told.  So  far  as  the  plot  was  con- 
cerned— the  young  bride,  the  jealous  husband,  the 
fit  of  anger,  and  the  spirit  which  came  back  to 
haunt  the  spot — it  was  the  old,  old  tale.  There 
was  one  unfortunate  fact  over  which  even  the 
judge  had  been  obliged  to  express  a  literary  regret 
— the  house  was  not  the  same  one.  The  house  in 
which  Stiles  was  living  had,  as  he  had  imagined, 
been  built  in  the  'forties,  while  the  legend  con- 
cerned itself  with  the  time  of  the  Revolution. 

"The  first  thing  that  made  me  believe  that 
that  paper  wa'n't  reel,"  the  judge  had  said,  rela- 
tive to  the  Stilesian  forgery,  "was  that  there  never 
was  no  Nicholas  Crater,  leastways  so  far  as  I  ever 
heard,  and  I've  been  searching  titles  in  this  town- 
ship for  upwards  of  fifty  years." 

"Come  Michaelmas,"  Stiles  had  added,  softly. 

"Your  uncle  never  had  no  brothers,"  the  judge 
had  explained,  "and  his  father,  old  Major  Crater, 
he  never  had  none.  He  was  the  man  that  built 


90  CRATER'S   GOLD 

that  house  you  live  in  now.  Before  that  they 
was  a  house  about  ten  rod  to  the  east,  at  the  top 
of  the  hill.  That  wa'n't  tore  down  until  after  I 
was  quite  a  little  boy.  You  can  see  part  of  the 
cellar  there  yet." 

"I  wondered  what  that  was,"  Stiles  had  said. 
"There's  a  white  lilac-bush  there." 

"And  has  be'n  ever  sence  I  can  remember,"  the 
judge  had  remarked,  with  a  smile.  "That's  the 
bush  that  the  sperrit  is  supposed  to  come  and 
water  when  the  flowers  is  in  bloom." 

"They're  in  bloom  now!"  Miss  Fuller  had  ex- 
claimed, with  a  start.  At  that  moment  had  begun 
her  air  of  depression  which  had,  an  hour  later, 
brought  forth  her  timid  inquiry. 

"Old  Major  Crater  he  built  that  house,"  the 
judge  had  repeated,  "and  his  father  was  Zebulon 
Crater.  He  married  a  Gilson,  but  I  never  heard 
much  about  him.  It  was  his  father's  brother,  his 
older  brother,  Solomon  Crater,  that  they  told  the 
story  about." 

Solomon  Crater,  so  it  appeared,  had  been  a 
much  more  dashing  young  man  than  his  ponder- 
ous name  would  imply.  As  one  filled  out  the 
picture  from  the  judge's  meager  and  literal  de- 
scription, he  had  been  a  man  to  go  about  the 
countryside  slapping  his  boot  with  his  riding-whip, 
frequenting  the  taverns  and  pinching  the  cheeks 
of  the  wenches.  He  had  also  been  an  officer  in 
the  Continental  Line,  fired,  no  doubt,  by  the 
example  of  that  selfsame  ancestor  of  the  judge  who 


CRATER'S    GOLD  91 

had  been  so  harshly  treated  by  the  French  or  the 
Injuns,  one  or  the  other,  at  Fort  William  or  Fort 
Henry,  the  judge  disremembered  which. 

As  records  run  in  New  England,  the  Revolution 
seems  to  have  been  a  most  accommodating  sort  of 
war.  Soldiers  practically  commuted  from  home 
to  the  battle-fields,  while  officers  who  were  pro- 
fessional men  had  time  to  build  up  a  practice  be- 
tween campaigns. 

Solomon  Crater,  for  one,  went  clear  to  South 
America  and  back  (and  the  west  coast  at  that) 
between  roll-calls,  and  brought  back  a  bride.  It 
was  odd,  in  light  of  the  present  day,  that  this 
young  Granadan  lady,  coming  from  the  old  civili- 
zation of  South  America  to  the  rough,  uncivilized 
country  of  North  America,  was  in  the  position  of 
a  Parisian,  say,  marrying  a  man  from  New  Zea- 
land. After  the  viceregal  life  of  Bolivia  (as  it  was 
later)  the  provincial  society  of  Massachusetts 
bored  her  to  extinction. 

The  point  was  that  when  young  Solomon  Crater 
came  rolling  in  from  Schuyler's  army  after  a  bat- 
tle or  two  in  the  north  country,  he  found  that  the 
viper  had  entered  his  home.  No  written  town  rec- 
ords touched  on  the  affair  at  all;  the  local  Don 
Juan  had  not  even  left  his  name  to  history.  There 
was  merely  the  tradition  of  the  strangling  by  night 
and  then  the  young  lady  who  came  out  to  water 
the  lilacs,  frightening  passers  in  the  darkness  by 
muttering  strange  words,  in  Spanish,  presumably, 
such  being  the  language  of  Bolivia  (as  it  was  later) . 


92  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"And  what  became  of  the  husband?"  Eksberger 
had  asked,  pertinently  enough. 

On  that  the  judge  was  hazy.  All  such  local  leg- 
ends are  hazy  on  matters  of  criminal  jurisprudence. 
The  unwritten  law,  with  reverse  English,  seems  to 
have  stood  without  question.  One  liked  to  think 
that  the  husband  met  his  death  by  riding  his  horse 
over  a  cliff  on  a  dark  and  stormy  night,  chased  by 
remorse.  It  would  have  spoiled  the  story  to  have 
learned  that  he  had  merely  been  frowned  on  by 
local  opinion  and  had  died  in  his  bed  of  organic 
trouble,  as  Stiles  privately  believed  that  he  had. 

At  any  rate,  the  tale  held  together  sufficiently 
to  give  Miss  Fuller  an  hour  full  of  solemn  thoughts 
before  they  stumbled  up  the  steps  of  the  old  Crater 
place.  Over  a  dim  light  in  the  kitchen  still  sat 
Mrs.  Fields,  somewhat  en  n£glig6e,  waiting  their 
coming.  She  had  fallen  asleep  half  a  dozen  times, 
and,  nodding  over  the  candle,  she  appeared  unusu- 
ally cronelike. 

"About  those  old  papers,"  shouted  Stiles  at 
once,  awakening  her  from  a  doze.  "Why  didn't 
you  tell  me  that  Judge  Tyler  brought  them  all 
back?" 

Mrs.  Fields,  as  a  part  of  her  negligee,  had  re- 
moved her  false  teeth.  "You  didn't  athk  me," 
she  replied,  unabashed. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IN  the  study  was  a  parlor  lamp  which  gave  as 
much  heat  as  a  full-size  stove,  and  Stiles  and 
his  guests  gravitated  back  to  it  much  as  they  would 
have  done  to  an  open  fire.  Miss  Fuller  was  frankly 
and  openly  nervous,  and  while  the  two  men  were 
both  equally  preoccupied,  they  showed  it  in  ways 
which  illustrated  oddly  their  completely  contrasted 
characters  and  training.  With  a  weight  on  his 
mind,  the  first  impulse  of  Stiles  was  to  sit  in  a 
chair,  unmoving,  until  his  problem  was  solved. 
Faced  by  mental  unrest,  Eksberger's  impulse  re- 
quired him  to  keep  on  his  feet  and  moving.  So 
now  he  walked  back  and  forth  until  he  exclaimed, 
"Say,  where  is  this  old  house  the  judge  was  telling 
about?" 

Stiles  looked  at  Miss  Fuller,  but,  seeing  her,  out- 
wardly at  least,  somewhat  composed,  he  rose  to 
his  feet.  "I'll  show  you,"  he  said. 

Miss  Fuller  rose  hastily,  too.  "You  don't  think 
I'm  going  to  stay  here  all  alone,  do  you?"  she 
asked. 

The  three  went  out  to  the  unpainted  piazza, 
where,  in  the  now  cooling  June  night,  Stiles 


94  CRATER'S   GOLD 

pointed  out  a  series  of  vague  mounds  at  the  far 
side  of  what  had  once  been  the  lawn.  There  was 
little  left  of  the  old  house  now,  even  of  the  founda- 
tions. By  daylight,  one  found  snatches  of  stone 
wall  and  an  irregular  hole,  half  filled  in,  the  whole 
surrounded  by  turf  banks  sloping  up  to  it,  like  a 
gun  rampart.  By  night,  one  saw  only  the  vague 
moundish  shapes,  but,  rather  startlingly  at  this 
moment,  the  white  lilac-bush,  like  a  misty  white 
scarf,  picked  itself  out  of  the  darkness.  Eksberger 
looked  at  it  a  moment. 

"What  say  we  go  over  and  explore  it?" 

Stiles  hesitated,  but  it  was  wholly  on  Miss 
Fuller's  account,  and  Miss  Fuller  shook  her  head 
decisively.  "I  wouldn't  go  near  that  place  at 
night  for  a  million  dollars." 

"I  would,  for  two  cents,"  said  Eksberger,  boldly. 
"Let's  go  look  at  it,  Stiles."  He  started  down  the 
steps,  but  Stiles  was  more  merciful. 

"Oh,  what's  the  use?"  he  said,  casually. 
"There's  nothing  there  but  some  old  stone  walls." 

Eksberger  started  resolutely  away  from  the 
steps,  but,  with  a  sudden  alarm,  Miss  Fuller 
grasped  Stiles's  arm.  "Charlie!  Charlie  Eks- 
berger," she  called,  in  a  strange,  shrill  voice, 
"don't  you  leave  this  piazza!" 

Eksberger  turned,  grinning,  his  teeth  showing 
in  the  darkness. 

' '  Oh,  Rose !"  he  pleaded.  ' '  For  Heaven's  sake, 
don't  be  such  a  simp." 

Miss  Fuller  was  not  abashed.     "I  don't  care 


CRATER'S    GOLD  95 

whether  I'm  a  simp  or  not.  I'm  frightened  and 
I  don't  want  you  to  leave  this  piazza." 

"Well,  I'm  going,  anyway,"  retorted  Eksber- 
ger.  He  turned  and  started  away  into  the  dark- 
ness, and  Miss  Fuller  commanded: 

"Charlie,  come  back  here  this  instant!"  She 
turned  to  Stiles.  "Mr.  Stiles,  make  him  come 
back."  Stiles  did  not  see  how  he  was  going  to 
do  that,  but  he  did  manage  to  call:  "Oh,  what's 
the  use?  There's  nothing  there." 

"Then  what's  the  harm  in  going?"  insisted  Eks- 
berger.  It  seemed  to  be  a  matter  of  pure  ob- 
stinacy with  him  now,  and  he  strode  stiffly  off. 
Miss  Fuller  looked  after  him  fearfully,  but  she 
said  no  more,  and  Stiles  tried  to  reassure  her: 
"He'll  be  back  in  a  minute.  There's  nothing 
there  to  hurt  him." 

For  a  moment  or  two  they  stood  there  watching 
the  white  collar  of  Eksberger,  the  only  part  of  him 
now  visible,  vanishing  under  the  shadows  of  the 
apple-trees  of  the  old  lawn,  Miss  Fuller  clutching 
Stiles's  arm.  As  the  darkness  finally  closed  over 
the  speck  of  white  the  girl  shuddered  slightly. 
She  was  a  strangely  different  figure  now  from  the 
self-possessed  woman  who  had  come  that  after- 
noon. 

"It's  cold  here,"  she  said,  in  a  voice  slightly 
trembling,  and,  after  the  heat  of  the  great  parlor 
lamp,  it  was  rather  shivery. 

"We'd  better  go  in,"  suggested  Stiles.  With  a 
kindly  instinct,  he  was  making  his  voice  as  matter- 


96  CRATER'S    GOLD 

of-fact  and  as  protecting  as  possible.  Reluctantly 
the  girl  turned  and  went  in  beside  him. 

"I  do  hope  he's  all  right,"  she  said  again, 
anxiously,  as  she  took  her  seat  in  that  same  rattan 
chair  which  she  had  occupied  when  Stiles  first 
saw  her,  but  which  was  now  placed  across  the 
table  from  his  own.  Sitting  there  on  both  sides 
of  the  lamp,  their  aspect  was  strangely  domestic. 
Stiles  noticed  it,  but  the  girl  was  apparently  busy 
with  her  uneasy  thoughts.  "I  suppose  I  am 
silly,"  she  said,  "but  I  can't  help  it." 

And  then,  as  always  happens  in  cases  where 
one  of  a  party  is  the  prey  of  such  fears,  they  im- 
mediately began  to  tell  all  the  supernatural  tales 
in  their  repertoires,  each  one  worse  than  the  last. 
At  least  Miss  Fuller  told  all  of  hers,  for  Stiles 
saw  early  the  wisdom  of  not  adding  to  a  state 
which  was  keyed  up  enough  as  it  was. 

Miss  Fuller's  stories  were  such  as  are  told  with 
shudders  and  frightened  eyes  in  every  stage 
dressing-room — revelations  of  mediums  and  pre- 
monitions of  death.  Stiles  wisely  said  nothing 
except  to  remark  once  or  twice,  "That  is  strange," 
until  in  the  warmth  of  their  growing  intimacy  the 
girl  turned  to  him  suddenly: 

"How  do  you  account  for  those  things?" 

She  put  the  question  in  implicit  trust,  a  trust 
that  was  almost  pathetic.  Just  why  she  should 
turn  to  him  as  authority  both  she  and  Stiles  under- 
stood vaguely,  but  neither  could  have  told.  Stiles 
was  simply  that  kind  of  a  man.  In  all  gentleness, 


CRATER'S   GOLD  97 

he  assumed  the  trust.  Before  he  knew  it  he  was 
delving,  in  simple  words,  into  pure  metaphysics. 
He  touched  the  great  law  of  coincidence.  He  in- 
stanced the  atheist  who  had  said  that,  if  he  were 
given  enough  type  and  enough  throws  he  could 
throw  Virgil's  JEneid  from  a  dice-box.  Only,  in 
his  version,  Stiles  did  not  use  the  ^Eneid.  He 
called  it  Webster's  Dictionary.  It  took  Miss  Ful- 
ler some  time  to  get  the  force  of  this  argument, 
and  when  she  did  get  it  she  doubted  it  on  practical 
grounds. 

"But  a  man  wouldn't  live  long  enough  to  throw 
more  than  a  few  million  times,  and  suppose  he 
got  it  all  right  except  one  letter,  he  would  still 
have  to  begin  throwing  all  over  again,  and  he 
might  not  come  anywhere  near  it  again  for  ten 
years."  At  which,  of  course,  Stiles  had  to  explain 
the  nature  of  infinity  and  pure  reason.  He  did 
not  know  how  much  the  girl  understood,  but  at 
least  she  listened,  fascinated  by  his  choice  of 
words. 

"You  do  know  a  lot,  don't  you?"  she  said,  with 
a  little  sigh,  and,  having  at  last  found  the  fount  of 
all  abstract  knowledge,  she  proceeded  to  put  to  it 
several  serious  problems  which  she  had  been  saving 
up  in  the  past — for  a  medium  presumably.  "What 
do  you  think  love  really  is?"  was  the  first  one. 

Exists  there  a  man  and  exists  there  a  girl  who 
could  not  do  justice  to  a  topic  like  that  around  a 
glowing  lamp  in  a  country  house  at  eleven  at 
night  ?  Miss  Fuller,  by  this  time,  was  leaning  her 


98  CRATER'S   GOLD 

elbow  on  the  table,  her  chin  in  her  hand,  and  look- 
ing at  Stiles  intently  with  her  eyes  open  wide  and 
with  her  expression  that  of  a  little  girl 

Of  all  the  strange  and  unexpected  conversations 
which  Stiles  had  had  in  that  disheveled  room,  this 
was  the  strangest.  His  fifteen  years  of  newspaper 
life  in  New  York  had  made  Stiles  metropolitan  in 
his  knowledge  rather  than  in  his  habits.  Like  most 
newspaper  men,  his  thrills  had  been  vicarious;  he 
had  remained  the  observer  rather  than  the  partici- 
pant. The  girl  before  him  he  knew  well  enough 
by  type — the  "show-girl"  type  he  would  have 
called  it.  He  had  seen  her  by  dozens  at  roof- 
gardens  and  on  the  motor  roads  of  Long  Island  on 
Sunday  afternoons.  Smart,  beautiful,  and  sophis- 
ticated, to  have  entertained  her  in  her  customary 
habitat  would  rather  have  frightened  him.  Here 
in  his  own  house  she  sat  before  him,  disclosed  as 
nothing  more  than  a  wistful,  simple  girl  who  put 
her  chin  in  her  hand  and  listened  to  his  very 
elementary  philosophy  as  a  girl  from  a  little  town 
in  the  Mississippi  basin  might  have  listened  to 
his  tales  of  newspaper  life  in  New  York.  From 
her  face,  as  he  saw  it  without  the  mask,  Stiles 
tried  to  guess  from  what  atmosphere  she  really 
had  sprung.  A  factory  village  in  upper  Vermont, 
a  flat  in  Harlem  over  a  delicatessen-store?  It 
might  have  been  either. 

"I  haven't  had  such  a  good  talk  in  ages,"  ex- 
claimed Miss  Fuller  as  Stiles  came  to  the  end  of 
his  argument,  and  of  a  truth  she  had  not.  Con- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  99 

versation  for  her,  as  it  is  for  most  of  her  world, 
had  been  merely  a  fragmentary  observation  of  the 
things  which  passed  before  her  eyes.  With  men 
and  women  of  the  kind  she  had  known,  it  is  rare 
that  three  consecutive  sentences  are  spoken  on 
the  same  subject.  A  thought  is  never  followed  to 
its  conclusion  and  wit  consists  of  burlesquing  and 
parodying  the  words  of  the  last  one  who  has 
spoken.  No  wonder  that  Stiles  appeared  to  her  in 
the  light  of  an  oracle. 

"I  could  talk  like  this  for  a  week,"  she  added, 
with  growing  enthusiasm,  but,  as  she  spoke,  the 
old  Ansonia  clock  in  the  kitchen  wheezed  out 
twelve,  and  the  two  of  them,  in  amazement, 
counted  the  strokes.  Stiles  took  out  his  watch, 
as  one  does,  to  verify  the  count,  and  smiled  as  he 
said,  "Twelve  o'clock." 

"Twelve  o'clock!"  echoed  the  girl,  and,  as  it 
dawned  on  her,  her  eyes  grew  startled.  "What  in 
the  world  has  become  of  Charlie  Eksberger?" 

The  question  had  leaped  to  Stiles's  mind  before 
she  had  spoken.  They  sat  for  a  moment  in  silence, 
looking  at  each  other  in  vague  alarm.  Then  from 
outside  the  house  came  an  ear-piercing  shriek. 
There  followed  a  confused  murmur  of  dulled, 
shouting  voices,  another  moment  of  silence,  and 
then  a  terrific  explosion. 


CHAPTER  XII 

ONE  would  suppose  that  men  who  had  been 
intimate  with  motors  for  ten  or  fifteen  years 
would  learn  that  it  is  rather  artless  to  play 
around  a  gasolene-tank  with  a  lighted  match,  but 
some  of  them  never  seem  to.  One  sees  their 
names  in  the  papers  from  time  to  time,  with  a  list 
of  the  clubs  to  which  they  belonged. 

The  explosion  outside  the  house  brought  Stiles 
and  Miss  Fuller  to  their  feet  with  a  simultaneous 
bound,  but,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  shriek  and 
then  the  report  followed  immediately  on  their 
ghostly  conversation  and  on  the  spectral  errand 
undertaken  by  Eksberger,  neither  had  any  thought 
of  elfs  or  gnomes  as  they  rushed  from  the  house, 
the  girl  quite  as  resolute  as  the  man.  Their  eyes 
blinded  for  a  moment  by  the  sudden  darkness,  they 
felt  their  way,  hand  in  hand,  to  the  gate,  but  in 
the  road  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  they  saw  figures 
moving  hurriedly  back  and  forth  and  heard  the 
sound  of  panting  voices.  The  red  tail-light  of  a 
car  showed  in  the  road  itself,  and,  as  they  got 
nearer,  the  bundled  figure  of  a  woman  could  be 


CRATER'S    GOLD  101 

seen  in  the  seat.  Her  voice  could  be  heard  giving 
decisive  directions. 

The  explanation  of  what  actually  had  happened 
was  probably  never  given  in  full.  It  was  quite 
unnecessary.  Knowing  Eksberger,  knowing  Pullar, 
one  could  build  up  the  scene  from  the  scantest 
details.  Given  a  man  like  Eksberger  standing  in 
meditation  beside  a  demoralized  motor,  given  a 
man  like  Pullar  coming  up  in  his  own  car  and 
catching  sight  of  the  wreck,  and  what  do  you 
have?  Genial  nods  in  the  darkness,  offers  to  be  of 
assistance,  full  and  graphic  accounts  of  the  acci- 
dent, intimate  details  of  fractured  springs  and  dis- 
torted differentials,  reminiscences  of  former  acci- 
dents to  the  party  of  the  first  part  and  former 
accidents  to  the  party  of  the  second  part,  a  few 
pipes  lighted,  a  few  cigars  offered,  matches  held 
courteously  behind  cupped  hands,  an  invitation  to 
inspect  the  fallen  colossus  in  full,  and  then  the 
match  ignited  about  six  inches  away  from  the 
punctured  feed-pipe.  When  Stiles  and  Miss  Fuller 
came  down  on  the  run,  Eksberger  and  Pullar  were 
still  throwing  sand,  but  the  fire  was  under  control. 

Luckily,  Pullar's  wife,  a  woman  who  tied  trout- 
flies  and  gloated  over  motors  as  enthusiastically 
as  Pullar  himself,  had  seen  the  spark  fall  just 
in  time.  Hers  had  been  the  shriek  which  had 
caused  both  men  to  jump  out  of  danger  just  before 
the  explosion  occurred.  She  had  even  snatched 
the  extinguisher  from  the  dash  of  her  own  car 
and  had  passed  it  out  to  her  husband.  In  that  you 


102  CRATER'S   GOLD 

have  Mrs.  Pullar  to  the  life — a  woman  who  would 
talk  motors  at  twelve  at  night,  who  would  buy  an 
extinguisher  out  of  a  catalogue  and  attach  it 
proudly  to  the  dash  of  her  car,  who  would  think 
of  it  in  a  crisis,  and  then  shout  efficient  directions. 
For  the  rest,  she  was  a  perfect  wife  for  a  country 
gentleman — a  regal  handsome  woman  with  gray- 
ing hair,  who  looked  ten  years  older  than  her 
husband — and  was;  an  expert  in  the  jargon  of 
country-house  life;  a  Lady  Bountiful  who  was  ex- 
ceedingly genial  to  the  happy  peasantry,  as  long 
as  they  kept  strictly  in  mind  the  fact  that  they 
were  the  happy  peasantry. 

Stiles  had  a  fair  idea  of  what  had  occurred  a 
dozen  yards  before  he  arrived  on  the  scene,  but 
Miss  Fuller  was  misty. 

' ' Charlie,  are  you  hurt  ?  Are  you  hurt,  Charlie ?" 
she  kept  calling  in  a  voice  which  rose  rapidly  into 
the  upper  register. 

On  occasions  of  accident,  women,  even  women 
like  Mrs.  Pullar,  have  no  shame  about  showing 
legitimate  alarm.  With  men  it  is  different,  and 
Eksberger  was  already  in  the  deprecatory  stage. 
He  did  not  show  it,  perhaps,  as  either  Stiles  or 
Pullar  would  have  done.  His  Turkish  manner 
broke  through. 

"No,  there's  nothing  the  matter  at  all,"  he 
said,  curtly;  and  then,  as  Rose's  voice  sailed 
higher  and  higher,  he  almost  commanded:  "For 
Heaven's  sake,  Rose,  nobody's  hurt !  Don't  make 
such  a  fuss!" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  103 

With  Mrs.  Pullar  within  hearing,  Stiles  wished 
that  Eksberger  had  not  spoken  in  just  that  way. 
Presumably  Miss  Fuller  herself  wished  it,  too. 
She  lapsed  into  silence  like  a  child  reproved  be- 
fore strangers,  and  Stiles,  in  a  sudden  sympathy, 
took  her  arm.  They  stood  there  while  Pullar  beat 
out  the  last  of  the  sparks,  then  both  of  the  fire- 
fighters came  toward  them. 

"Narrow  squeak,"  said  Pullar,  proudly.  He 
had  really  enjoyed  the  affair.  "The  feed-pipe 
must  have  been  struck  by  the  cam-shaft  when  the 
cylinders  came  up  through  the  truss-rods  back- 
ward, if  you  know  what  I  mean." 

The  clinic  on  motors  was  apparently  about  to 
be  taken  up  just  where  it  had  been  broken  off 
by  the  explosion,  but  Mrs.  Pullar  must  have  made 
a  move  in  the  darkness  that  only  her  husband  saw. 

"Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon!"  said  the  latter,  hur- 
riedly. "Mr.  Stiles,  may  I  present  you  to  my 
wife?" 

Mrs.  Pullar  turned  amiably  from  her  seat  in 
the  car.  "How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Stiles?  I've 
heard  a  great  deal  about  you." 

But  Stiles  had  learned  a  little  lesson  that  day, 
and  he  hastened  to  lead  Rose  into  the  light  of  the 
car  lamps.  "This  is  Miss  Fuller,"  he  said,  and, 
as  Eksberger  straightened  himself  expectantly  in 
the  background,  he  added,  with  a  gesture,  "Mr. 
Eksberger  you  apparently  already  know." 

Even  in  the  darkness  Stiles  could  see  Pullar 

start,  and  realized  that,  like  the  judge,  the  agent 
8 


io4  CRATER'S   GOLD 

had  entertained  the  mysterious  Mr.  Eksberger 
quite  unawares.  Pullar,  however,  covered  it  up, 
as  the  judge  had  not  done. 

"We  did  not  know  that  it  was  Mr.  Eksberger," 
he  said,  gracefully. 

There  followed  an  awkward  pause,  but  just  as 
that  day  had  made  Eksberger  an  enthusiastic  an- 
tiquarian, so  had  that  day  made  Stiles  an  incurable 
host. 

"Why  don't  you  all  come  up  to  the  house?"  he 
exclaimed. 

Almost  before  the  words  had  left  him  he  felt 
a  twitch  at  his  arm,  where  Miss  Fuller's  arm 
touched  it.  The  twitch  was  probably  involuntary, 
but  the  meaning  behind  it  was  not.  Show-girl  or 
no  show-girl,  Miss  Fuller  had  seen  instantly  com- 
plications in  the  invitation  which  had  not  appeared 
to  Stiles's  coarser  masculine  sense.  Mrs.  Fields,  as 
a  chaperon,  might  not  rank  as  high  in  these 
people's  minds  as  she  did  in  his.  Mrs.  Pullar 
apparently  saw  complications,  too. 

"You're  awfully  good — "  she  began  in  the  way 
which  means  "but  under  no  circumstances,"  but 
Pullar,  like  Stiles,  saw  only  the  masculine  point 
of  view. 

"It's  terribly  late — "  he  suggested,  yet  in  a  way 
which  seemed  to  mean,  "We'd  be  delighted." 

Eksberger  cast  the  chairman's  vote.  "Oh, 
come  ahead!"  he  urged,  enthusiastically.  "None 
of  us  could  sleep  now." 

With  this  plausible  opinion  the  minority  report 


CRATER'S   GOLD  105 

of  the  feminine  Left  was  not  even  heard.  Between 
the  three  men  the  thing  was  voted  and  passed, 
and,  leaping  into  his  own  car  beside  his  wife,  Pullar 
began  backing  up  the  hill,  for,  like  all  expert 
motorists,  his  chief  delight  was  to  drive  his  car 
backward — and  fast. 

"Nice  fellow,"  said  Eksberger,  approvingly,  as, 
with  Miss  Fuller  and  Stiles,  he  followed  on  foot. 

"That  woman  would  be  quite  good-looking," 
answered  Rose,  "if  it  weren't  for  her  mouth." 

"He's  not  so  bad,"  said  Pullar,  from  his  seat 
in  the  car. 

"Oh,  he's  all  right,"  said  his  wife,  "but  that 
woman  is  common  as  mud." 

On  the  surface,  however,  nothing  hampered  the 
verve  of  the  midnight  party.  Soda  biscuits  were 
found,  and  a  virgin  cake.  In  fact,  if  it  had  not 
been  for  that  involuntary  twitch  at  his  arm,  Stiles 
would  never  have  guessed  that  anything  save 
mutual  admiration  lay  under  the  careful  polite- 
ness which  his  guest  and  Mrs.  Pullar  accorded 
each  other.  As  it  was,  he  found  himself  watch- 
ing the  older  woman  a  little  jealously.  Pullar  and 
his  wife  were  again  in  evening  clothes,  and  the 
agent,  who  always  seemed  boyishly  eager  to  antici- 
pate Stiles's  observations,  explained  them  shame- 
facedly. 

"Dinner  again  to-night,  but  you  mustn't  think 
that  we  are  as  giddy  as  this  all  the  time." 

It  had,  however,  begun  to  occur  to  Stiles  that 
there  must  be  much  more  in  Eden  than  he  had 


106  CRATER'S   GOLD 

wot  of.  Probably  the  same  idea  was  occurring  to 
Eksberger.  His  mental  picture  of  the  "hick  real- 
estate  agent"  who  had  lost  Baumgarten's  money 
(Baumgarten  sweating  blood  the  while)  was  hardly 
borne  out  by  the  life.  He  was  frankly  impressed 
by  the  evening  clothes  and  coyed  his  own  manner 
to  fit  the  elegant  company.  Easy  detachment, 
careless  familiarity  with  money  and  fame,  this 
was  the  air  at  which  he  aimed  and — the  marvel  of 
such  men! — the  one  which  he  almost  attained. 
No,  he  did  not  bother  about  the  car.  Seeing  that 
Pullar  had  held  the  fatal  match,  Pullar  had  been 
rather  anxious  about  it.  Besides,  there  was  the 
insurance.  It  all  came  back  to  a  simple  informal 
gathering.  One's  ten-thousand-dollar  cars  did  get 
smashed  occasionally.  All  of  them  admitted  that 
and  dismissed  it.  Eksberger  was  in  his  element, 
completely  happy,  but,  since  that  involuntary 
twitch  at  his  arm,  Stiles  had  been  on  his  guard. 
And  Rose?  Since  the  day  she  had  left  her  home 
to  ride  in  managers'  cars,  had  there  ever  been  a 
moment  when  Rose  had  not  been  on  her  guard? 

"Are  you  going  to  be  in  town  long,  Mr.  Eksber- 
ger?" By  the  careless  manner  in  which  Mrs. 
Pullar  asked  it  one  would  not  naturally  impute 
anything  except  indifferent  politeness,  but,  being 
warned,  the  question  put  the  whole  gathering  on 
the  alert — all  save  Eksberger.  Stiles  became  furi- 
ously busy  with  his  soda  biscuits  and  plates. 

"No,  thank  you,  I  couldn't  possibly,"  said  Mrs. 
Pullar.  She  held  up  a  biscuit  still  untouched  to 


CRATER'S    GOLD  107 

prove  her  case,  and,  with  the  vindictive  precision 
of  such  women,  she  let  nothing  divert  her  from 
her  seemingly  innocent  question.  Pullar  looked 
unhappy  and  anxiously  apologetic,  as  he  always 
seemed  forced  to  look  in  Stiles's  presence.  Poor 
chap,  it  is  very  difficult  to  be  a  diplomat  and  a 
man  among  men  when  one  has  a  wife  with  graying 
hair  and  fixed  ideas  about  the  lower  classes.  As 
to  Rose,  Rose  stared,  apparently  unheeding,  smil- 
ing vaguely,  at  the  carpet,  or  what  was  left  of  it; 
but  just  as  Rose  had  a  way  of  being  cynical  silent- 
ly, so  did  Stiles  imagine  that  she  could  be  very  un- 
comfortable while  smiling  innocently  at  the  floor. 

Alone  among  them,  Eksberger  beamed  like  a 
sand-boy  and  took  the  question  for  what  it  seemed, 
just  an  innocent  expression  of  genial  come-and-be- 
one-of-us.  There  was  no  way  to  stop  the  man. 
"Only  to-night,"  he  replied  to  the  question. 
"Rose  and  I  were  just  prospecting  around  the 
country — " 

"Please,  Mrs.  Pullar,"  begged  Stiles.  "Some 
cake  or  something?  More  seltzer?  I  can  get  it  in 
a  minute." 

Abominable  woman,  she  did  not  even  divert 
her  attention  to  answer.  She  held  up  the  still  un- 
bitten  biscuit  and  hung  sweetly  on  Eksberger's 
words.  Her  flattering  attention  was  the  breath  of 
life  to  Eksberger. 

"Rose  and  I  have  been  all  over  the  country  in 
that  little  old  car,"  he  boasted ;  but  there  is  a  point 
at  which  any  woman  must  fight. 


io8  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"All  over  the  country  meaning  everywhere  be- 
tween Stamford  and  Garden  City,"  explained 
Rose,  still  smiling  sweetly. 

"My  dear  child,  I  know  what  you  mean,"  ex- 
claimed Mrs.  Pullar,  and  she  made  it  quite  evi- 
dent that  she  did  know. 

One  gave  it  up.  Let  Eksberger  talk.  He  could 
not  make  it  any  worse  than  he  had. 

"Of  course  I've  got  to  be  in  the  city  to-morrow. 
Those  square-heads  of  mine  would  ruin  me  if  I 
left  them  alone.  But  I'm  coming  back.  Believe 
me,  I'm  coming  back,  Mrs.  Pullar." 

Mrs.  Pullar  smiled  winningly.  ' '  I'm  sure  I  hope 
you  will." 

"Well,  you  take  it  from  me,  Mrs.  Pullar,  and 
you,  too,  Mr.  Pullar,  there  isn't  a  prettier  bit  of 
country  in  America  than  you  have  right  here,  and 
I've  seen  them  all.  You  can  talk  all  you  want 
about  the  Jersey  coast  and  Long  Island  where  all 
the  millionaires  have  their  estates,  but  I  wouldn't 
give  two  cents  for  them  compared  with  this.  Why, 
the  last  time  we  were  up  this  way  I  said  to  Rose — 
didn't  I,  Rose? — I  said,  'Don't  tell  me  that  you 
could  find  scenery  like  this  on  Long  Island!'  The 
minute  I  saw  this  old  place  I  said,  'Say,  look  here!' 
Had  no  idea  who  owned  it,  or  anything.  I  said: 
'Say,  look  here !  If  some  one  who  knew  how  to  do 
it  would  only  slip  a  few  thousand  dollars  into  that 
old  dump — it  wouldn't  take  much — only  fifteen  or 
twenty  thousand — if  some  one  would  only  put 
up  a  stone  wall  where  that  fence  is  and  paint  that 


CRATER'S   GOLD  109 

piazza  and  make  a  lawn  and  cut  down  two  or  three 
of  those  old  trees,  there  wouldn't  be  a  finer  place 
in  the  country.'  Course  you'd  have  to  fix  the 
plumbing,  slam  in  a  bathroom  or  two." 

"Oh,  there  are  great  possibilities,"  agreed  Mrs. 
Pullar.  Then,  with  utter  casualness,  she  turned 
to  Stiles.  Oh,  how  neatly,  said  the  bend  of  her 
head,  these  things  can  be  done  when  a  woman 
does  them!  "But  you  are  not  going  to  sell  the 
place,  are  you,  Mr.  Stiles?  After  all  these  years 
that  it  has  been  in  the  family?" 

As  one  varies  one's  voice  by  a  hair's-breadth  in 
talking  first  to  a  child  of  two  and  then  to  a  great, 
grown  man  of  three,  so  did  Mrs.  Pullar  vary  her 
manner  in  talking  first  to  Eksberger  and  then  to 
Stiles.  Stiles  began  to  have  sudden  misgivings 
as  to  how  his  own  vague  past  loomed  in  her  eyes. 
Then,  like  a  flash,  he  saw  where  revenge  would  lie. 

"I  may  possibly  sell,"  he  replied.  He  watched 
the  effect  of  the  shot.  Mrs.  Pullar  was  skilled; 
her  face  said  nothing;  but  he  saw  that  he  still  had 
the  floor.  "Of  course,"  he  said,  "if  I  could  afford 
it,  I  would  never  dream  of  letting  the  place  go  out 
of  my  hands,  but  you  know  Mr.  Eksberger's 
reputation?" 

Eksberger  looked  at  him  suddenly  and  very  un- 
certainly, with  wide-open  eyes.  If  he  had  spoken 
out  loud  he  would  have  said,  "What  do  you  mean 
— reputation?"  and  even  Rose  looked  up  with  in- 
terest. Stiles  let  them  look,  and  then  he  said, 
sweetly : 


no  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Mr.  Eksberger  has  the  reputation  that  when 
he  wants  a  thing  he  generally  gets  it." 

Eksberger  began  to  breathe  again.  "I  guess 
that's  right,"  he  agreed.  He  was  in  on  it  now. 
"Say,  didn't  we  kid  them  along?"  would  be  what 
he  would  say  after  Pullar  and  his  wife  were  gone. 
As  soon  as  he  got*a  chance  to  catch  Stiles's  eye 
he  would  wink  and  draw  down  one  side  of  his 
mouth,  but  Miss  Fuller,  who  had  not  said  a  word, 
thought  that  trivial  matters  had  been  discussed 
long  enough.  Something  vital  had  happened  that 
night. 

"Charlie,"  she  asked,  irrelevantly,  almost  im- 
patiently, "what  was  there  there?  In  the  old 
house,  I  mean." 

Mrs.  Pullar  looked  at  her  sharply.  If  Mrs. 
Pullar  had  been  Eksberger  she  would  have  said, 
"Who  told  you  to  talk?"  but,  being  Mrs.  Pullar, 
she  said  nothing  and  studied  the  lace  on  Miss 
Fuller's  collar. 

Stiles  leaped  into  the  breach.  "We  heard  the 
story  of  the  old  Crater  scandal,"  he  explained, 
"and  Eksberger  went  out  to  find  the  ghost." 

"The  ghost?"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Pullar,  aghast.1 
She  looked  openly  at  her  husband  and  her  hus- 
band looked  at  her.  So  full  of  alarm  was  her 
glance  that  even  Stiles  was  upset.  Perhaps  the 
judge  had  not  told  all  there  was  to  tell. 

"Why,  why,  yes,"  he  answered,  uncertainly. 
"The  lady  who  comes  out  to  water  the  lilacs  at 
night." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  in 

"Oh,  that  ghost!"  answered  Mrs.  Pullar,  with 
sudden  relief,  but  Eksberger  burst  into  a  roar. 

"My  gosh,  Stiles!  how  many  ghosts  do  you 
keep?" 

For  his  answer  Stiles  looked  to  Mrs.  Pullar,  but 
Mrs.  Pullar  had  gathered  herself. 

"I  couldn't  imagine  what  you  were  talking 
about,"  she  said.  "I  had  forgotten  about  that 
old  legend."  But  she  was  still  in  such  evident 
confusion  that  even  Eksberger  had  pity  on  her 
and  took  up  the  tale. 

"Anyway,  my  private  ghost  failed  to  make  good. 
She  had  gone  to  see  a  man  about  a  dog  or  some- 
thing. I  searched  around  there  for  the  best  part 
of  an  hour,  and  then  I  went  down  to  look  at  the 
car,  and  that  was  where  I  met  you  people." 

"I  told  you  there  was  nothing  there,"  said  Stiles. 
"Wasn't  I  right?" 

"You  were  right,"  agreed  Eksberger,  mocking 
his  pious  intonation.  "But  it  must  have  been 
a  whale  of  a  house  in  its  day.  I  covered  every 
inch  of  the  cellar." 

"Cellar?"  exclaimed  Pullar,  suddenly  coming  to 
life.  He  had  a  way  of  dreaming  himself  out  of  the 
conversation.  He  had  been  thinking  about  car- 
bureters or  spoon  bait  for  bass.  "You  didn't  go 
into  that  old  cellar?" 

"I  sure  did  go  into  that  old  cellar." 

"At  night?" 

"Just  before  I  met  you." 

"The  one  at  the  other  side  of  the  lawn?" 


ii2  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"The  one  at  the  other  side  of  the  lawn." 
Pullar  sat  back  and  looked  at  him,  holding  his 

breath.     He  held  it  so  long  that  all  the  others 

started  in  question. 

"But,  man  alive!"  he  gasped,  finally,  "there's 

a  hole  in  that  cellar  two  hundred  feet  deep!" 


CHAPTER  XIII 

I  FEEL  weak!"  said  Eksberger.  He  had  sunk 
suddenly  into  a  chair,  and,  while  he  was  the 
only  one  of  the  company  who  had  made  a  move, 
the  entire  group  gave,  superficially,  the  impression 
of  having  rushed  up  with  towels  and  aromatic 
spirits;  the  entire  group,  with  one  exception,  that 
is,  for,  alone  among  them,  Rose  Fuller  sat  un- 
moving,  as  she  had  for  half  an  hour  past.  Odd 
that  this  was  the  girl  who,  an  hour  before,  had 
run  out  crying,  "Charlie!  Charlie!"  in  the  upper 
register,  for  now  she  sat  looking  at  Eksberger  with 
just  the  faintest  ironical  squint  to  her  eyes.  One 
has  had  occasion  to  say  several  times  that  Rose 
Fuller  had  the  ability  to  be  cynical  silently.  This 
describes  the  act  in  the  nearest  that  it  ever  reached 
to  a  physical  manifestation. 

"Well,  what  about  the  hole?"  she  said,  at  last, 
bluntly. 

The  words  seemed  to  call  the  entire  company 
back  to  reality  and  all  looked  at  Pullar.  Pullar, 
however,  was  not  himself  in  large  companies.  He 
was  deprecatory,  if  you  like. 

"Oh,  it's  just  a  hole,"  he  said,  vaguely,  but  the 


ii4  CRATER'S    GOLD 

answer  satisfied  nobody.  Holes  ten  feet  deep,  yes ; 
but  holes  two  hundred  feet  deep,  no.  He  looked 
at  his  wife  for  permission,  and,  not  receiving,  at 
least,  a  refusal,  went  on:  "Well,  some  people  used 
to  say  there  was  an  old  copper-mine  there,  and  then 
there  was  a  tradition  that  there  was  an  under- 
ground passage  which  was  used  to  hide  slaves  es- 
caping to  Canada.  Personally  I  think  it  is  noth- 
ing but  an  old  well." 

Having  succeeded  in  starting  the  conversation 
in  a  pertinent  direction,  Rose  Fuller  was  content 
to  let  others  keep  it  in  motion.  Beyond  essentials, 
she  herself  did  not  go  in  much  for  talk.  There  was 
a  moment's  pause  in  which  each  face  could  be 
seen  measuring,  mentally,  the  depths  of  wells  and 
copper-mines,  and  then  Eksberger  demanded  (it 
now  being,  in  a  way,  his  hole),  "Have  you  ever 
been  down  it?" 

"No,"  answered  Pullar.  "Nobody  has.  But 
I've  shouted  down  it — when  I  was  a  boy." 

"Then,"  asked  Eksberger,  with  reluctant  doubt, 
"how  do  they  know  it's  two  hundred  feet  deep?" 
The  thought  that  he  might  have  fallen  only  fifty 
feet  or,  say,  seventy-five,  threatened  to  take  the 
edge  off  his  adventure.  He  was  eager  to  have 
Pullar  stand  pat  on  two  hundred. 

"They  don't  know,"  replied  Pullar.  "That's 
merely  what  they  say. ' '  Then  with  his  usual  man- 
ner of  being  miles  away,  and  a  chord  from  happier 
days  having  apparently  been  touched  by  that 
harking  back  to  his  boyhood,  he  added,  wistfully: 


CRATER'S   GOLD  115 

"There's  a  queer  echo.  You  can  count  eight  or 
nine  before  your  voice  comes  back." 

"Ah,"  thought  Stiles,  "the  strange  mutterings 
at  night  (in  Spanish,  presumably,  such  being  the 
language  of  Bolivia),"  but  the  obtuseness  of  the 
local  genius  struck  Eksberger  as  incredible. 

"But  look  here,  man!"  he  exclaimed,  "why 
couldn't  somebody  drop  a  string  down  it?  That 
would  tell  you  how  deep  it  is." 

For  answer  Pullar  smiled  faintly,  then  looked 
toward  his  wife.  Should  he  tell,  or  shouldn't  he? 
His  wife  informed  him  promptly: 

"Oh,  Bobby,  there's  no  need  of  going  into 
that  now." 

She  actually  seemed  to  think  that  her  words 
were  comprehensible,  as  they  probably  would  have 
been  to  any  real  resident  of  Eden,  but  they  certain- 
ly were  not  to  Stiles,  much  less  to  Eksberger. 
As  for  Rose,  she  didn't  care,  so  far  as  one  could 
tell  from  the  absent  smile  with  which  she  was  still 
gazing  down  at  the  carpet.  The  matter  was  com- 
ing pretty  close  home,  however,  to  Stiles.  He  had 
only  been  waiting  for  the  proper  moment  to  force 
an  issue  on  that  second  and  apparently  more  im- 
portant ghost.  He  saw  that  it  was  no  use  talking 
to  Pullar,  and  he  carried  the  matter  to  head- 
quarters. 

"Really,  Mrs.  Pullar,"  he  begged,  "let's  have 
the  story.  You  can't  hurt  my  feelings."  He  looked 
very  eager  and  deferential,  and  inwardly  he  knew 
that,  however  dubious  she  might  consider  him  as 


ii6  CRATER'S   GOLD 

an  individual,  Mrs.  Pullar  could  at  least  be  made 
to  talk  to  him  as  a  member  of  her  own  class,  an 
honor  she  had  not  accorded  to  every  one  that  even- 
ing. She  did,  with  a  little  laugh. 

"No,  Mr.  Stiles,  you  mustn't  ask  me." 

Stiles  looked  at  her  whimsically.  "In  other 
words,  the  Crater  history  is  a  closed  book,  a  picture 
we  do  not  study,  a  page  we  do  not  scan ;  but  you 
must  grant  that  that  still  leaves  me  in  the  dark 
as  to  why  your  husband  or  some  other  given  scien- 
tist could  not  drop  a  fish-hook  down  the  copper- 
mine." 

Mrs.  Pullar  laughed  again,  the  "dear  boy"  sort 
of  laugh  that  a  woman  with  graying  hair  would 
use,  and,  as  Stiles  had  hoped,  he  saw  that  he  had 
established  himself  as  an  equal. 

"Shall  I  put  it  this  way,"  she  askea,  archly  (that 
being  the  manner  in  which  duchesses  conversa- 
tionally tap  gay,  sad  dogs  like  Stiles  on  the  shoul- 
der), "that  in  your  uncle's  day  we  did  not  come 
up  here  with  fish-lines  or  for  any  other  purpose?" 

She  continued  her  smile  suggestively,  looking 
straight  into  Stiles's  eyes,  and  Stiles  looked  straight 
back  into  hers.  He,  too,  smiled  with  complete  com- 
prehension. ' '  But  Heaven  help  the  happy  peasan- 
try if  they  get  too  gay  with  that  old  bird !"  was  the 
sentiment  which  rose  to  his  mind,  although  it  might 
more  naturally  have  risen  to  Eksberger's  lips. 

"Come,  Bobby,"  said  Mrs.  Pullar,  having  de- 
cided that  the  evening  was  at  an  end.  "It  must 
be  two  o'clock." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  117 

She  gathered  the  evening  wrap  that  she  wore, 
as  she  rose  to  her  feet,  and  the  act  broke  a  sort  of 
spell  that  had  hung  over  the  group  while  the  two 
members  of  the  upper  classes  had  gazed  into  each 
other's  eyes  and  flung  each  other  defiance.  It 
called  the  others  back  into  the  conversation,  for 
while  Pullar  had  been  dreaming  off  on  a  side-road 
of  spark-plugs  or  trout-lures  or  what  not,  Eksber- 
ger  had  been  left  miles  behind.  Not  once  had  he 
had  a  chance  to  say: 

"What  do  you  mean,  fish-lines?" 

Like  Baumgarten,  however,  the  rising  of  the 
company  gave  Eksberger  an  opening,  and  for  the 
first  time  appeared  in  him  what  Stiles  had  been 
looking  for  ever  since  he  had  known  him — a  trace 
of  Baumgartenism. 

"Say,  do  you  people  ever  get  to  New  York?"  he 
asked  (although  Baumgarten  would  have  said  "the 
big  city"). 

Mrs.  Pullar  turned  sweetly  from  the  door. 

"Now,  happy  peasantry,  here's  where  you  get 
yours,"  thought  Stiles,  with  a  grin,  as  he  watched 
the  ominous  suavity  of  her  motion. 

"We  have  a  great  many  friends  in  New  York," 
she  said,  quietly.  She  looked  at  Eksberger  and 
saw  that  she  had  not  quite  carried  her  meaning. 
She  knew  that  in  Stiles  she  now  had  an  audience; 
she  could  not  leave  any  doubt,  so  she  added, 
succinctly:  "But  of  course  New  York  is  so 
changed.  All  our  friends  were  on  Murray  Hill 
and  down  around  dear  old  Washington  Square. 


ii8  CRATER'S    GOLD 

That  shows  you,  Mr.  Eksberger,  what  old  fogies 
we  are." 

It  was  too  much  to  ask,  however,  that  a  man 
who  had  never  heard  of  Ticonderoga  should  be 
very  much  excited  by  Murray  Hill. 

"Well,  well,  well,"  replied  Eksberger  in  a  patron- 
age as  hearty  as  her  own,  "you  just  leave  it  to  me. 
The  next  time  you  are  in  town  and  are  lonely,  you 
just  telephone  Bryant  four,  six,  eight,  nine.  I'll 
fix  you  up  with  a  box  for  anything  you  want  to 
see.  Just  do  that  little  thing,  will  you?  And  say," 
he  shouted,  as  an  afterthought,  as  the  car  was 
about  to  move  away  from  the  gate,  "if  they  ask 
what  you  want,  tell  'em  that  you  are  particular 
friends  of  Mister  Eksberger  and  that  he  told  you 
to  call. 

"They  might  have  trouble  in  getting  me,"  he 
explained  to  Stiles,  as  the  three  walked  back  to  the 
house,  "unless  the  people  in  the  outer  office  knew 
who  it  was. 

"And  now,  folks,"  he  concluded,  in  the  lamplit 
study,  rubbing  his  hands  briskly,  "I  don't  know 
what  you're  going  to  do,  but  I'm  going  to  bed." 

"I  guess  we  all  are,"  said  Stiles,  and,  as  Eks- 
berger sauntered  off  up  the  stairs,  he  bent  over  to 
turn  down  the  big  lamp.  On  the  plate  remained 
a  fragment  of  cake.  Stiles  took  it  absently,  then, 
looking  up,  he  found  that  Miss  Fuller  was  still  in 
the  room. 

"Have  some?"  he  asked. 

Miss  Fuller  looked  at  the  crumbs  and  shook  her 


CRATER'S    GOLD  119 

head,  amused.  She  watched  him  a  moment  with 
that  mild  indifference  of  hers,  and  then  she  re- 
marked, "We  seem  to  have  spilled  your  beans 
with  Queen  Victoria." 

Stiles  did  not  deny  it.  He  stood  as  if  studying 
minutely  the  fragment  of  cake  in  his  hand.  The 
deep  lines  around  his  mouth  became  suddenly 
deeper.  The  girl  saw  them. 

"What  are  you.  laughing  at?" 

"I  was  thinking,"  replied  Stiles,  "what  Eks- 
berger  would  have  said  to  that — 'What  do  you 
mean,  spilled  the  beans?'" 

The  girl  looked  away  without  returning  his 
smile,  and  for  an  instant  Stiles  feared  that  he 
had  gone  too  far,  that  he  had  overestimated  the 
shrewdness  with  which  she  regarded  her  fa- 
mous escort.  Apparently,  however,  she  was  not 
thinking  of  that  at  all.  "Well,  didn't  we?"  she 
insisted. 

"I  don't  care  whether  you  did  or  not,"  replied 
Stiles.  "Queen  Victoria  is  nothing  to  me.  I 
never  saw  her  until  to-night." 

Miss  Fuller,  however,  pursued  her  own  logic 
relentlessly.  "I'm  going  to  clear  out,  the  first 
train  in  the  morning." 

"That's  not  necessary,"  said  Stiles,  quietly. 

"I  know  it's  not  necessary,"  retorted  the  girl. 

"Well,  then,"  replied  Stiles,  "I  ask  you  to 
stay." 

It  happened  to  be  that  which  made  the  girl 
raise  her  eyes  slowly  and  look  at  him  steadily, 


120  CRATER'S    GOLD 

but  if  it  had  not  been  that,  she  would  have  done 
it  just  the  same.  It  was  not  the  remark,  but  the 
moment.  Midnight,  a  country  house,  a  disheveled 
room,  and  their  sudden  fantastic  intimacy.  Such 
moments  breed  almost  an  intoxication  of  con- 
fidence. Stiles  looked  back  into  the  girl's  eyes, 
which  never  moved.  Three  or  four  times  he 
stopped  himself  from  saying  what  he  felt  tempted 
to  say,  each  time  knowing  that,  sooner  or  later, 
he  would  say  it,  just  the  same.  As  a  preliminary 
he  put  the  crumbs  of  cake  back  on  the  plate.  The 
girl  missed  neither  the  gesture  nor  its  significance. 

"Don't  let  me  spoil  your  supper." 

The  remark  delayed  the  confession,  but  it 
could  not  avert  it.  At  any  rate,  the  girl  did  not 
move.  Silence  and  the  glow  of  the  lamp  restored 
the  spell  of  the  moment,  and,  in  a  gentler  voice, 
only  half  bantering,  she  asked  him: 

"Well,  what's  on  your  mind?" 

It  was  all  that  Stiles  needed.  He  looked  at 
her  with  that  same  speculative  smile.  The  truth 
was  that  the  evening  had  shown  him  that  the  r61e 
of  confessor  for  which  he  had  cast  Judge  Tyler 
would  in  all  probability  be  played  by  this  girl. 
He  began : 

"There  are  several  things  that  I  want  to 
know." 

With  that  almost  brutal  acuteness  with  which 
she  divined  some  things,  the  girl  took  him  up. 
"You  want  me  to  tell  you  what  Charlie  Eksberger 
is  after?" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  121 

Stiles  nodded. 

"And  Stuffy  Baumgarten,  too?" 

He  nodded  again. 

"/'//  tell  you,"  replied  the  girl,  promptly,  "but 
it's  a  long  story.  Only,"  she  added,  "it  doesn't 
amount  to  a  row  of  pins." 

"I'm  not  so  sure  of  that,"  suggested  Stiles. 

The  girl  studied  his  face  with  a  searching 
expression  almost  motherly  in  its  faint  anxiety. 
She  seemed  to  fear  he  might  still  have  some  golden 
hope. 

"Of  course,"  she  hinted,  carefully,  "Charlie 
never  had  any  idea  of  buying  this  place  for  a 
picture  park." 

Stiles  dismissed  the  suggestion  with  a  wave  of 
his  hand.  "I  am  not  one  of  the  hicks." 

Miss  Fuller  laughed.  "I  didn't  think  you 
were."  She  stood  for  a  full  minute  more,  look- 
ing into  the  fireplace  in  front  of  which  Stiles 
was  standing.  "It's  a  funny  thing  to  say," 
she  began,  at  last,  "but  I  suppose  I  am  the 
mystery." 

Stiles  did  not  even  look  up.  "I  wondered  if 
that  were  not  so." 

The  girl  was  surprised.     ' '  What  do  you  mean  ?" 

Stiles  did  look  up  then.  "I  didn't  mean  just 
this  nonsense  about  buying  the  place.  I  meant 
the  real  tale.  You  said  it  was  a  long  story.'* 

"I  see,"  said  the  girl.  She  hung  her  head  and 
came  to  a  sudden  stop.  Stiles  feared,  to  his  regret, 
that  there  might  be  no  confession  that  night.  A 


122  CRATER'S   GOLD 

moment  later  he  was  sure  there  would  be  none,  for 
Eksberger's  voice  came  hurtling  down  from  the 
head  of  the  stairs: 

"Hey,  there!    Are  you  people  going  to  stand 
there  chewing  the  rag  all  night?" 


CHAPTER  XIV 

MRS.  FIELDS  was  to  have  a  delightful  sur- 
prise on  the  following  morning.  Stiles  was 
down  for  breakfast  before  nine  o'clock.  Even  at 
that  his  guests  were  both  on  the  piazza  before  him, 
enjoying  what  was  for  them  the  novel  picture  of 
the  sparkling,  frostlike  dew  on  the  heavy  grass 
of  the  ragged  lawn.  As  he  came  out  the  door, 
Eksberger  turned  eagerly  to  include  him  in  the 
conversation. 

"Say,  Stiles,"  he  called,  "I've  been  thinking." 

Stiles  wondered  whether  that  broad  assertion 
would  go  unchallenged  by  Rose,  and  Eksberger 
must  have  wondered  it,  too,  for  he  hastened  to 
anticipate  her.  "Yes,  I  know  it  isn't  done,  but 
I'll  stop  it  before  the  neighbors  complain.  But, 
seriously,  old  man,  I've  been  thinking  that  you've 
got  a  gold-mine  here,  whichever  way  you  look  at  it." 

Stiles  appeared  open  to  any  suggestion,  and  Eks- 
berger went  on:  "You  know  those  people  who 
were  here  last  night  weren't  hicks." 

Stiles  nodded. 

"Are  there  any  more  like  them  here?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  Stiles. 


i24  CRATER'S  GOLD 

"Well,  you  can  just  bet  there  are,"  replied  Eks- 
berger.  "People  don't  take  the  trouble  to  dress 
like  that  for  the  dicky-birds.  Didn't  they  say 
they'd  been  out  to  a  dinner-party  or  something?" 

"Something  of  the  kind,"  answered  Stiles.  He 
recalled  Pullar's  modest  statement  of  being  a  gen- 
tleman on  nothing  at  all,  but,  even  at  that,  he  was 
inclined  to  accept  Eksberger's  snap  observation  as 
the  truer  judgment.  On  his  trips  to  the  village  he 
had  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  red-tiled  roof  of  a 
distant  villa  on  the  other  side  of  the  town;  he  had 
seen  a  liveried  coachman  in  front  of  the  post- 
office,  and  other  things  which  do  not  properly  go 
with  a  run-down  township.  From  the  gossip  of 
Mrs.  Fields  he  had  also  heard  hints  of  a  vague  and 
alien  aristocracy  which  hid  itself  behind  hedges 
and  built  big  houses  on  mountain-tops  and  in- 
dulged itself  in  other  forms  of  madness.  One  man 
had  bought  three  thousand  acres  of  good  timber- 
land  just  to  let  pa'tridges  run  wild,  and  so  on.  If 
Stiles  had  been  twenty-four  and  impressionable,  or 
if  he  had  been  a  walking  man  or  a  riding  man,  he 
might  have  investigated  these  things  for  himself; 
but  Stiles  was  not  twenty-four,  nor  was  he  a  riding 
man  or  a  walking  man.  He  was  a  sitting  man. 

Eksberger  was  looking  at  him  with  an  air  of  real 
criticism.  "The  trouble  with  you,"  he  said,  "is 
that  you  don't  look  around  you.  Do  you  know 
where  I'd  have  been  if  I  hadn't  looked  around  me? 
Selling  tickets  in  a  Brooklyn  theater !  Do  you  get 
that?  Selling  tickets  in  a  Brooklyn  theater!" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  125 

Miss  Fuller  hummed,  '"And  now  I  am  the  ruler 
of  the  Queen's  navee.'" 

"That's  all  right,"  protested  Eksberger,  "but 
I'm  not  selling  tickets  any  more — leastways  for 
any  one  else." 

When  Eksberger  was  in  earnest  he  was  very 
much  in  earnest. 

"I've  been  doping  this  thing  out,  and  you  know 
what  I  think?  Pullar  and  his  crowd  know  what 
this  land  is  worth,  and  don't  you  forget  it.  Do 
you  know  what  land  no  better  than  this  is  worth  in 
some  parts  of  Long  Island?  Ten  thousand  dollars 
an  acre.  That's  all !  Only  ten  thousand  dollars  an 
acre!" 

"This  isn't  Long  Island,"  suggested  Stiles. 

"I  didn't  say  it  was,  did  I?"  retorted  Eksberger. 
"And  it  isn't  Hoboken,  either.  Do  you  know  what 
those  rich  people  do?"  He  had  evidently,  in  his 
own  mind,  constructed  a  large  colony  of  million- 
aires on  the  basis  of  Mrs.  Pullar's  de"colletage. 
"Do  you  know  what  those  rich  people  do?  They 
just  love  to  come  off  to  a  little  jerk-water  spot 
like  this  where  there's  scenery  and  mountains  and 
everything.  What  does  it  matter  to  them  how  far 
they  go  from  New  York?  Haven't  they  got  their 
cars  and  yachts  and  everything?  Do  they  have  to 
punch  a  time-clock  every  morning?  You  bet  your 
life  they  don't!  Then  they  buy  some  old  run-down 
farm  for  a  song  and  fix  it  up  with  fifty  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  improvements,  and,  after  that, 
farms  all  around  that  sold  for  five  hundred  dollars 


126  CRATER'S   GOLD 

couldn't  be  bought  for  five  thousand;  no,  nor  ten 
thousand,  either.  Then  the  old  apple-chewer  that 
sold  them  the  farm  in  the  first  place  thinks  he's 
been  cheated." 

"I  being  the  apple-chewer  in  this  case,"  sug- 
gested Stiles. 

"Not  unless  you  sell  before  you  get  your  price," 
replied  Eksberger.  "Say,"  he  went  on,  "did  you 
pipe  how  they  all  sat  up  and  took  notice  when  they 
got  the  hunch  that  I  was  going  to  buy  this  place  ? 
Last  night,  I  mean." 

"You  may  be  right,"  replied  Stiles,  "but  if  they 
wanted  the  land  so  badly,  why  didn't  they  snap 
it  up  when  it  was  on  the  market,  as  it  was  for 
weeks  before  you  and  Baumgarten  came  along  to 
start  the  action?" 

Eksberger  positively  backed  away  two  or  three 
feet  in  his  incredulous  disgust.  "Look  here,"  he 
commanded,  as  if  he  saw  that  he  would  have  to 
teach  Stiles  his  alphabet  before  he  could  even 
talk  to  him.  "If  you  wanted  to  buy  a  horse,  or 
a  house,  or  a  play,  or  a  piece  of  land,  or  a  share  of 
stock,  would  you  go  to  the  man  who  owned  it 
and  say:  'Now,  come  on,  Freddie;  you've  got 
something  valuable  here.  I've  got  to  have  it  right 
off.  What's  the  most  you'll  take  for  it?'  Not  if 
you  had  any  brains,  you  wouldn't.  You  wait  until 
he  comes  to  you,  you  do,  and  then  you  say:  'That 
rubbish?  I  wouldn't  have  it  at  any  price/  You 
let  it  stay  on  the  market  until  he  goes  broke  or  is 
sick  of  seeing  it  there,  and  then  you  snap  it  up 


CRATER'S   GOLD  127 

for  just  what  you  want  to  pay."  Eksberger  caught 
Miss  Fuller's  cynical  eye  and  finished,  lamely, 
"All  except  the  show  business,  and  that's  dif- 
ferent." 

By  turning  to  Stiles,  however,  so  that  he  could 
not  catch  Miss  Fuller's  eye,  he  was  able  to  go  on 
triumphantly:  "Now  the  proposition  is  this.  For- 
get that  moving-picture  bunk.  Those  kind  of 
people  wouldn't  be  so  likely  to  fall  for  that,  but 
here's  the  way  they  look  at  it.  They've  got  their 
estates  and  their  tennis-courts  and  their  little 
click  up  here.  They've  been  buying  these  farms 
for  ten  and  fifteen  dollars  an  acre — ten  dollars' 
worth  of  land  and  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  view. 
Nobody's  found  out  this  spot  except  them  until 
we  happened  along  the  other  day,  but  the  minute 
we  came  over  that  hill  outside  the  town,  I  said, 
'Rose,  hold  your  breath;  you're  seeing  scenery!' 
And  what  did  I  tell  you  the  other  day?  Just  as 
soon  as  I  saw  the  spot  and  let  people  know  that  I 
liked  it,  didn't  they  begin  falling  all  over  your 
neck?" 

"They  seem  to  have,"  admitted  Stiles. 

"Of  course  they  did,"  argued  Eksberger.  "And 
do  you  know  why?  Because  they  knew  that  their 
good  thing  was  gone.  They  knew  me  and  they 
knew  my  reputation — that  when  I  want  a  thing 
I  generally  get  it.  You  know  what  they  said  to 
themselves?  They  said  to  themselves:  'Look 
here,  boys  and  girls,  we've  got  to  be  getting  on 
the  job.  Here  we've  been  dreaming  away  that 


128  CRATER'S   GOLD 

we  could  go  out  and  snap  up  that  old  Crater  place 
when  we  got  darn  good  and  ready,  and  now  here 
Eksberger  he  comes  along  and  he's  beat  us  to  it.  If 
he  gets  to  bidding  against  us,  good  night!  The  sky's 
the  limit  with  these  theatrical  men.  It  was  our 
money  made  the  town  what  it  is.  We  thought  of 
this  game.  What's  the  harm  with  us  buying  the 
place  first  and  squeezing  the  lad  for  a  few?'" 

"It  sounds  plausible,"  said  Stiles,  "so  long  as 
you  keep  on  wanting  it." 

Eksberger  laughed.  "Don't  worry.  I'm  a  good 
sport.  I'll  keep  'em  coming.  And  do  you  know, 
Stiles,  I  wouldn't  like  it  so  bad  to  really  have  a 
place  up  here.  A  bunch  like  Pullar  and  those 
people,  they  have  a  lot  of  fun  in  a  place  like  this. 
Quiet  people,  yes,  but  I  don't  mind  that.  I  was 
thinking  last  night.  With  all  I've  got  to  carry, 
sometimes  I  think  I  will  go  crazy  unless  I  get  away 
to  some  little  spot  like  this,  kick  around  with 
plain,  quiet  people  like  Pullar  and  his  wife  and 
tneir  friends,  and  just  forget  all  about  the  show 
business.  I'm  not  so  sure  that  I  won't  buy  your 
place,  after  all." 

He  paused,  rapt  in  his  dream,  as  if  already  he 
saw  himself  leading  the  life  of  a  country  squire  in 
Eden  with  Pullar  and  those  sort  of  people.  In  a 
quieter  tone  he  went  on,  breathing  a  spirit  of 
honest  and  almost  pathetic  good-will: 

"And,  after  all,  these  people  would  still  be  the 
gainers.  If  I  bought  a  place  up  here  I  could  get 
publicity  for  them  that  they'd  never  know  how  to 


CRATER'S    GOLD  129 

get  themselves — subtle  stuff.  It  would  put  the 
town  on  the  map.  The  very  fact  of  my  having  a 
place  here  would  make  their  property  worth  that 
much  more.  Like  as  not  I  could  bring  a  regular 
crowd  of  theatrical  people  here  in  the  summer- 
time. I  guess  they  never  thought  of  that,  but 
look  what  it  would  mean  to  them." 

The  screen  door  opened  and  Mrs.  Fields  stood 
there,  waiting. 

"Breakfast,  Mrs.  Fields?"  asked  Stiles;  but 
Mrs.  Fields  gave  him  a  look  and  departed.  Break- 
fast indeed!  What  else  did  he  think  at  that  hour 
of  day? 


CHAPTER  XV 

BIG  as  it  was,  the  old  Crater  house  had  not  been 
able  to  offer  asylum  to  the  chauffeur.  A  bed 
of  some  kind,  to  be  sure,  might  have  been  found, 
but,  as  Eksberger  had  said,  tactfully,  "Any  kind 
of  a  shakedown  will  do  for  me,  but  you  have  to 
be  particular  about  your  chauffeur."  Rather  than 
upset  his  elegance,  he  had  been  sent  on  to  the  white 
house  to  sleep,  and  had  evidently  found  comfort 
there,  for  he  had  not  returned.  Two  men  from  the 
Felsted  garage,  with  a  crane  on  the  back  of  a 
truck,  brought  the  first  reminder  of  the  wrecked 
car.  A  peal  from  the  outraged  door-bell  announced 
their  advent  as  Stiles  and  his  guests  were  finishing 
breakfast.  Eksberger  took  the  business  in  hand 
briskly. 

"You  men  just  go  on  down  the  hill  to  the  brook 
and  get  the  thing  started,  and  I  will  come  down 
as  soon  as  I  finish  my  cigar." 

The  ringleader  of  the  garage  men  wiped  his 
mouth  with  the  back  of  an  oily  hand.  "What 
brook?" 

"The  brook  at  the  foot  of  the  hill.  What  way 
did  you  come?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  131 

The  man  jerked  his  head.    "Town." 

"Well,  then,  you  passed  it,  right  down  there. 
The  car's  in  the  water  beside  the  bridge,  and,  be- 
lieve me!  it's  some  mess!" 

The  men  never  moved,  and  both  looked  at 
Eksberger  with  a  stony  indifference. 

"There's  no  car  there,"  said  the  man  who  had 
spoken  before.  "That's  where  they  told  us  it  was, 
but  we  couldn't  find  it." 

Eksberger  laughed.  "What  are  you  trying  to 
tell  me  ?  That  car  couldn't  be  moved  with  a  steam- 
shovel.  You  go  and  have  another  look." 

Back  in  the  'sixties  they  say  that  a  ticket-seller 
for  a  theater  and  a  hotel  clerk  entered  a  contest  to 
decide  the  sang-froid  championship  of  the  world. 
By  the  rules  of  the  contest  they  were  stood  facing 
each  other  and  attempted  to  stare  each  other  down. 
The  first  one  that  moved  a  muscle  of  his  face  or 
showed  any  emotion  except  calm  contempt  was 
to  be  judged  beaten.  For  a  day  and  a  night  they 
stood  there,  neither  moving  nor  giving  way  to 
any  expression  except  a  fixed  one  of  utter  bore- 
dom. To  keep  them  from  fainting,  meals  were 
brought  them  and  they  were  allowed  to  sit  down. 
Otherwise  they  kept  up  the  contest  just  as  before. 
All  during  the  'seventies,  the  'eighties,  and  the 
'nineties  they  still  kept  at  it.  They  were  put  in  a 
freight-car,  just  as  they  sat,  and  exhibited  at  the 
Philadelphia  Centennial  and  at  the  Chicago  Ex- 
position of  'ninety-three.  They  were  carried 
abroad  and  shown  in  Brussels  and  Paris  until,  in 


isa  CRATER'S    GOLD 

common,  they  had  as  many  gold  medals  as  a  pickle- 
jar.  The  news  of  the  Johnstown  flood  was  read  to 
them  as  a  test,  but  neither  showed  any  concern. 
The  facts  that  John  L.  Sullivan  had  been  knocked 
out  and  that  Jay  Eye  See  had  broken  the  record 
were  posted  up  on  both  sides  of  a  bulletin-board 
and  placed  between  them,  but  neither  even  asked 
where  it  had  happened.  They  saw  the  Cornish 
giant  and  declared  it  a  fake  at  sight.  They  were 
placed  at  windows  and  watched  the  troops  march 
away  to  the  Spanish  War  with  complete  indif- 
ference. It  looked  as  if  death  alone  would  decide 
the  contest,  until  the  century  turned  and  automo- 
biles came  into  use.  One  day,  while  they  were 
sitting  in  a  ring  at  a  country  fair,  staring  away  at 
each  other,  a  half -grown  boy  from  a  near-by  garage 
came  up  and  looked  at  them  both.  "Aw,  say !"  he 
drawled.  "Will  you  look  at  de  guys?"  Both 
turned  at  the  same  instant  and  both  encountered 
his  stare.  Shamefaced,  they  got  up  and  walked 
away. 

Eksberger  may  have  been  a  ticket-seller  in  a 
theater,  but  years  of  disuse  had  lost  him  the  art. 
For  thirty  seconds,  perhaps,  he  returned  the  stare 
of  the  garage  man;  then  he  gave  an  apologetic 
laugh.  ' '  You  come  with  me  and  I'll  show  you, ' '  he 
said.  Miss  Fuller  and  Stiles  appeared  on  the  piazza 
at  that  moment,  and  from  the  foot  of  the  steps  he 
called:  "These  men  are  trying  to  tell  me  that 
there  is  no  car  down  there  in  the  brook.  I'll  be 
back  in  a  minute." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  133 

Neither  Stiles  nor  Miss  Fuller  made  any  move 
to  accompany  him,  and  both  stood  at  the  piazza 
rail,  watching  the  brisk  hitch  of  his  retreating 
back. 

"I  can  quote  Baumgarten  now,"  said  Stiles,  not 
unkindly. 

Miss  Fuller  looked  toward  him.  "What  did 
Baumgarten  say?" 

"He  said  that  he  was  a  great  Charlie." 

"Well,"  said  Miss  Fuller,  "isn't  he?" 

"He  is,"  replied  Stiles. 

As  if  he  had  heard  them,  Eksberger  turned  sud- 
denly and  came  back  to  the  rail.  For  a  moment 
Stiles  feared  that  he  had  heard  them,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  he  was  purely  reminiscent. 

"Say,"  he  said,  "I  have  to  laugh  when  I  think 
what  a  jolt  those  people  got  when  they  found 
out  who  I  was."  He  chuckled  and  turned  away, 
then,  in  the  usual  sequence,  he  turned  and  added, 
"What's  more,  I  don't  believe  they've  found  out 
who  Rose  is  yet!" 

Again  the  two  on  the  piazza  watched  the  ner- 
vous, retreating  figure  almost  trotting  to  catch  up 
with  the  garage  men,  and  this  time  Stiles  was 
careful  to  let  it  get  well  away  before  he  spoke. 
Then  he  said,  slowly,  but  with  a  scarcely  veiled 
curiosity : 

"I  must  be  one  of  the  hicks,  after  all." 

Miss  Fuller  apparently  never  spoke  when  silence 
would  tell  the  same  story.  She  raised  her  eyebrows 
a  little,  and  Stiles  explained: 


i34  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"It  seems  to  be  hickish  not  to  know  who  you 
are." 

In  answer  to  this,  Miss  Fuller  did  not  even  raise 
her  eyebrows. 

"Well,"  insisted  Stiles,  dryly,  "who  are  you?" 

Miss  Fuller  laughed  shortly  and  almost  impa- 
tiently. "Charlie  Eksberger  thinks  that  the  world 
begins  and  ends  at  Broadway  and  Forty-second 
Street." 

It  was  a  truth  conclusive  enough  to  focus  atten- 
tion again  on  Eksberger.  His  head  and  shoulders 
were  just  disappearing  at  the  brow  of  the  hill, 
bobbing  humorously  with  his  quick  little  steps 
down  the  slope,  and  both  stopped  speaking  to 
watch  them.  After  all,  it  was  hard  to  keep  one's 
eyes  from  the  man.  Odd  as  it  seemed — and  both  of 
them  standing  there  were  big  enough  to  realize  it 
— the  pleasant  young  Jew  with  the  Irish  face  was 
not  at  heart  a  conceited  man.  He  was  simply  naif. 
He  had  that  queer  streak  of  childlike  ingenuous- 
ness which  seems  almost  inseparable  from  men  of 
great  practical  achievement. 

Everybody  knew  a  bit  of  his  story,  even  men 
like  Stiles,  who  had  tried  to  ignore  him.  He  had 
been,  as  he  had  said,  a  ticket-seller  in  a  Brooklyn 
theater  when  a  Broadway  character  who  was  little 
more  than  a  tout  had  induced  him  to  put  all  he 
had  saved  and  all  he  could  borrow  into  a  play.  It 
had  proved  to  be  one  of  those  popular  plays  which, 
like  popular  people,  are  usually  such  because  of 
their  instinctive  genius  for  sticking  closely  to  set- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  135 

tied  opinion.  It  was  just  such  a  play,  by  the  way, 
as  Judge  Tyler  would  have  been  a  villain  in.  Every 
popular  misbelief  had  a  place  in  it.  Every  deacon 
was  a  hypocrite,  every  sneak-thief  was  a  hero, 
every  failure  was  right  and  every  success  was 
wrong.  A  play  as  consoling  as  that  was  bound  to 
succeed.  It  ran  for  years  and  years,  and,  after 
that,  Charles  Eksberger  was  a  dictator  of  dramatic 
taste.  People  wrote  articles  about  him  telling  of 
his  native  genius,  which  he  had,  surely  enough, 
but  not  in  the  line  where  they  found  it.  Yet  one 
could  not  help  liking  him.  He  had  not  said  that 
he  was  a  genius  until  other  people  had  said  it  so 
often  that  he  was  bound  to  believe  it. 

It  was  with  a  smile  far  from  unsympathetic  that 
Stiles  turned  back  to  Miss  Fuller.  "Put  it  this 
way,"  he  said.  "If  all  the  world  were  Broadway 
and  Forty-second  Street,  who  would  you  be  then?" 

It  was  the  one  subject  that  was  not  agreeable 
to  the  usually  calm  Rose  Fuller.  "Nobody,"  she 
said,  shortly.  "Nobody  at  all." 

Stiles  could  not  believe  that.  "You  are  on  the 
stage?" 

As  if  to  end  the  unpleasant  subject,  Miss  Fuller 
let  him  have  it  all  at  once.  "I  was  in  'The 
Foibles.'  That  was  what  Charlie  meant;  and 
'The  Daisy  Chain'  and  'The  Girl  from  Madrid.'" 

Quite  as  much  from  the  deprecatory  manner  in 
which  she  said  it  as  from  the  flattering  tones  of 
Eksberger,  it  dawned  on  Stiles  that  what  she  really 

was  saying  was  that  she  had  been  the  chief  link 
10 


i36  CRATER'S    GOLD 

in  "The  Daisy  Chain,"  a  leading  "Foible,"  and 
the  very  "Girl  from  Madrid."  He  stood  over- 
come, acutely  embarrassed.  "The  Daisy  Chain" 
had  been  a  title  burned  into  his  consciousness  for 
a  year  in  Subway  cars  and  by  electric  signs  and 
the  pages  of  Sunday  newspapers.  So  had  the 
others.  Perhaps  for  that  very  reason  he  had 
scrupulously  avoided  seeing  any  of  them  (that 
had  been  Stiles),  but  now,  in  this  personal  view 
of  their  moving  spirit,  he  found  himself  almost 
pathetically  eager  to  do  her  honor. 

"Rose  Fuller?  Rose  Fuller?"  Surely  the  name 
was  familiar.  But  was  it  really  so,  or  merely  be- 
cause he  was  trying  to  make  it  so?  From  all  his 
newspaper  instincts,  as  well  as  what  Eksberger 
had  said  and  what  the  girl  had  told  him,  he  knew 
that  he  was  standing  beside  a  celebrity,  had  stood 
beside  one  for  the  best  part  of  two  days  and  never 
known  it.  In  the  popular  vision,  Eksberger  was 
probably  a  humdrum  earthling  compared  to  this 
planet.  What  in  the  world  had  he  done  with 
those  fifteen  years  of  his  in  New  York?  Some 
politics,  some  pageants,  some  precious  interviews, 
and  a  vast  deal  of  law-courts;  and  all  the  time 
he  had  let  slip  by  in  vague  consciousness  the  things 
that  the  great  mass  of  people  were  thinking  and 
shouting  about  and  enjoying,  dismissed  them  be- 
cause they  were  popular,  thinking  them  thereby 
contemptible.  An  office-boy  would  have  known 
this  name  in  an  instant.  He  recalled  with  a  hot 
flush  his  kind  condescension  of  the  evening  be- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  137 

fore  because  this  girl  had  sat  there  beautifully  un- 
conscious that  she  was  listening  to  Aristotle  and 
Kant.  And  all  the  time  he  had  sat  there  beauti- 
fully unconscious  that  he  was  listening  to  Rose 
Fuller!  Was  she  piqued  now  because  he  had  not 
known  her,  or  slightly  contemptuous,  as  he  had 
been  on  the  evening  before?  Neither  one.  She 
was  laughing. 

"You  don't  even  know  now!" 

In  view  of  his  long  moment  of  confusion,  Stiles 
could  hardly  protest,  but,  as  he  stood  there  em- 
barrassed, the  girl  took  pity  on  him. 

"Don't  let  it  worry  you.  You're  not  the  only 
one." 

"Yes,"  agreed  Stiles,  "there  are  other  hicks." 

"Nonsense!"  retorted  the  girl.  But  from  his 
pinnacle  of  detached  philosophy  Stiles  had  swung 
to  a  very  frenzy  of  self-abasement.  He  was  awk- 
ward and  silent,  and  as  if  she  did  it  only  when  it 
was  necessary,  the  girl  gently  assumed  the  lead. 
"We  didn't  get  very  far  last  night." 

Whether  it  was  Aristotle  or  Kant  or  whether  it 
was  the  fragment  of  cake  in  front  of  the  fireplace, 
she  really  seemed  to  have  friendly  memories  of 
that  evening.  It  was  a  direct  invitation. 

"Do  you  still  want  to  tell  me  about  the  mys- 
tery?" asked  Stiles. 

"If  there  is  any,"  she  answered. 

Stiles  did  not  reply  for  a  moment.  ' '  No,"  he  said, 
quietly,  at  last,  "I  guess  there  is  no  mystery  now." 

As  if  Miss  Fuller  saw  that  he  could  again  stand 


i38  CRATER'S   GOLD 

alone,  she  waited  patiently  for  whatever  he  might 
want  to  say  next.  Happily  for  him,  although  he 
was  totally  unconscious  of  it,  when  he  did  begin 
it  was  in  that  gentle  air,  half  deference,  half  com- 
radeship, that  the  girl  liked  best  in  him. 

"You  know,"  he  suggested,  "you  said  some- 
thing yesterday  when  we  were  standing  here  be- 
fore dinner?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  girl,  simply,  but,  to  make  sure 
that  they  really  did  mean  the  same  thing,  he 
quoted,  "You  said  that  you  and  Eksberger  were 
not — married." 

In  her  more  usual  manner,  the  girl  let  her  silence 
reply  and  stood  looking  straight  before  her. 

"Well,"  suggested  Stiles,  "does  Eksberger  want 
to  marry  you?" 

The  girl  shrugged.    "So  he  says." 

"And  Baumgarten,  too?" 

"Baumgarten  is  very  silly." 

"And  that,"  concluded  Stiles,  "is  the  mystery?" 

"Pretty  much,"  said  the  girl. 

This  time  Stiles  himself  adopted  her  own  policy 
of  silence,  but  she  was  better  at  it  than  he  was  and 
he  found  himself  forced  to  go  on. 

"It  is  fairly  clear,"  he  began,  "but  I  can't  un- 
derstand yet  why  either  one  of  them  should  come 
'way  up  here." 

The  girl  smiled.  "Charlie  told  you  why  Stuffy 
came." 

"Because  Eksberger  said  that  he  had  picked 
out  this  place?" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  139 

This  time  it  was  rather  more  than  a  smile. 

"Charlie  Eksberger,"  said  the  girl,  "is  like  a 
stage-manager. ' ' 

"A  stage-manager?" 

Miss  Fuller  explained.  "He  doesn't  mean 
anything  by  it,  but  when  he  has  heard  a  thing 
a  couple  of  times  he  begins  to  think  that  he 
wrote  it." 

"I  see,"  replied  Stiles.  "Then  he  really  didn't 
shout  with  joy  at  these  rocks  and  rills?" 

"He  did  when  they  were  pointed  out  to  him." 

"By  you?" 

"Who  else?" 

Stiles  looked  at  her  quickly.  "Rose,  hold  your 
breath;  you 're  seeing  scenery."  Both  laughed ;  but 
in  a  different  tone  he  went  on,  "Tell  me,  please, 
did  you  want  to  buy  this  place?" 

Miss  Fuller  threw  out  her  hands.  ' '  Oh,  Heavens ! 
it  never  got  that  far — with  me.  I  said  that  I  liked 
it.  I  said  that  I  wished  I  owned  it,  that  I  could 
make  something  out  of  it.  Haven't  you  said  that 
about  dozens  of  places  you  have  seen?" 

"Yes,"  said  Stiles,  "but  it  never  threw  the 
market  into  a  turmoil." 

Miss  Fuller  laughed.  "It  wouldn't  have  in  this 
case  if  it  hadn't  been  for  Baumgarten." 

Stiles  felt  the  problem  getting  too  knotty.  "I'm 
stupid,"  he  said,  "but  please  let's  have  this  in 
A  B  C." 

Apparently  Miss  Fuller  preferred  this  method 
to  any  other.  "Well,"  she  replied,  "we  really 


i4o  CRATER'S    GOLD 

did  see  Baumgarten  after  we  got  back  that  night. 
He  came  up  to  our  table  in  the  Claridge." 

"And  Eksberger  did  really  say  that  he  had  his 
eye  on  this  place?" 

"Oh  yes,  he  said  all  that,  but  Stuffy's  not  such 
a  fool  as  they  think  him." 

"You  mean  that  that  was  not  all  that  was  said 
at  the  table?" 

"Not  all." 

"You  told  him  you  wanted  the  place?" 

Miss  Fuller  looked  at  him  with  rather  wide- 
open  eyes.  "I  didn't  tell  him.  He  may  have 
guessed  it."  She  broke  off  the  story  and  then 
picked  it  up  again  hurriedly,  as  if,  as  before,  she 
wanted  to  get  it  over  and  done  with.  "Stuffy  is 
always  trying  to  do  something  expensive.  He 
offered  to  buy  a  theater  for  me  once.  And  I  will 
grant  him  this — that  he  is  not  a  man  to  be  bluffed." 

"So  he  told  me,"  said  Stiles. 

"He's  told  several  people,"  said  Miss  Fuller. 

"But,"  asked  Stiles,  thoughtfully,  "where  was 
Eksberger  all  this  time?" 

"Where  is  he  ever  when  he's  got  some  wild  idea 
in  his  head?  Lost  to  the  world,  swimming  in  the 
clouds.  As  a  matter  of  fact,"  Miss  Fuller  added, 
"even  I  never  had  any  idea  that  Stuffy  would  do 
any  such  ridiculous  thing  as  really  come  up  here. 
Of  course,  when  he  got  your  letter,  Charlie  was 
surer  than  ever  that  it  was  merely  on  account  of 
him  that  Stuffy  was  trying  to  buy  it." 

"And  he  still  thinks  that?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  141 

"So  far  as  I've  told  him,"  replied  Miss  Fuller. 
She  paused  a  moment,  then  added  a  phrase  which 
probably  summed  up  all  her  viewpoint  toward  life. 
"What's  the  use?" 

Without  any  reason  except  that  both  felt  that 
all  had  been  said  that  could  be  said,  they  started 
to  walk  to  the  gate. 

"It's  clear  enough  and  ridiculous  enough,"  com- 
mented Stiles,  slowly.  "Just  as  ridiculous  as  I 
feared  it  was  going  to  be.  All  except,"  he  added,  a 
moment  later — ' '  all  except  these  local  people.  Wliy 
did  the  mention  of  Eksberger  scare  them  out  of 
their  wits?" 

,Miss  Fuller  looked  up  at  him  and  looked  very 
squarely. 

"Can't  you  guess?"  she  asked,  bluntly. 

Unfortunately,  Stiles  could  guess,  and  guess 
very  clearly,  but,  considering  the  fact  that  Miss 
Fuller  herself  had  come  with  Eksberger,  he  could 
hardly  say  so.  He  had  an  idea  that  allowed  him 
to  escape  it.  "Wait  a  minute,"  he  said,  suddenly, 
and  Miss  Fuller  obeyed  the  command  literally. 
She  stopped  in  her  tracks. 

"Do  you  really  want  the  place?"  asked  Stiles. 
"You  can  have  it  if  you  do." 

Miss  Fuller  tossed  her  head.  "With  a  ghost  on 
it?  I  should  say  not!" 


CHAPTER  XVI 

OTILES'S  intention  and  Miss  Fuller's,  uncon- 
^  sciously,  had  been  to  walk  down  to  the  car 
to  see  how  Eksberger  and  his  mechanics  were 
getting  along,  but  Miss  Fuller  was  left  to  finish 
the  walk  alone.  As  they  reached  the  gate  there 
drove  up  one  Pullar,  on  the  seat  beside  him  a 
handsome  old  colonel  with  brown  spats  and  a 
white  mustache.  In  the  open  air,  with  a  wheel 
to  hold,  Pullar  was  a  different  man,  and  with  the 
assurance  which  Stiles  had  originally  known  him 
to  possess  he  introduced,  "My  brother-in-law,  Mr. 
Cady."  He  looked  around  to  include  Miss  Ful- 
ler, but  Miss  Fuller  had  slipped  away.  The  hand- 
some old  colonel  shook  hands.  He  was  genial 
enough,  but  he  looked  Stiles  over  with  a  critical 
eye.  He  was  evidently  a  man  used  to  forming 
his  own  judgments,  damme,  whether  they  were 
worth  anything  or  not,  and  under  that  domineer- 
ing eye  (the  brown  spats  and  the  white  mustache 
being  still  kept  in  mind)  Stiles  had  a  sudden  il- 
lumination concerning  the  unhappy  state  of  the 
boyish  Mr.  Pullar.  Mr.  Pullar,  when  one  came 
to  think  of  it,  had  all  the  aspects  of  a  man  who 


CRATER'S    GOLD  143 

has  married  money,  or,  worse  than  that,  a  man 
whose  wife's  relatives  have  money. 

There  was  something  in  the  air  of  the  stiff  Mr. 
Cady  that  said  he  had  come  to  see  Pullar  at  work, 
had  been  sent,  hi  other  words,  to  see  that  he  did 
his  duty  now  and  no  shirking,  but,  being  a  man 
himself  (who  had  lived  in  his  time),  he  let  his 
brother-in-law  go  at  it  in  his  own  way. 

"I  wonder  if  I  could  see  you  a  minute,"  began 
Pullar. 

"Why,  certainly!"  replied  Stiles.  "Won't  you 
come  up  to  the  house?  Will  you  come,  Mr. 
Cady?" 

"Will  you  come,  Jack?"  repeated  Pullar,  as  if 
he  were  accustomed  to  act  as  interpreter  between 
his  rich  relative  and  the  lower  classes. 

"I'll  sit  here,"  said  the  colonel. 

The  two  others  walked  away,  leaving  the  white 
mustache  to  glower  first  at  the  house  and  then  at 
the  wind-shield.  At  a  conventional  distance  Pul- 
lar rilled  his  pipe  with  all  the  fixings. 

"Stiles,"  he  said,  abruptly  (he  had  evidently 
been  told  to  be  abrupt  and  had  promised  to  do  it), 
"just  what  will  you  take  for  your  place?" 

"One  million  dollars,"  replied  Stiles,  promptly. 

Pullar  laughed.  "You  haven't  come  down  a 
cent,  have  you?  But,  seriously,"  he  added,  "I 
really  want  to  talk  business  this  morning.  It's 
spot  cash  and  dealing  with  people  who — hang  it 
all,  Stiles! — people  who  really  have  a  right  to  be 
given  a  chance." 


144  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Stiles  looked  at  him.  "Who  are  you  buying  for 
this  time?"  he  asked.  "Mr.  Cady?" 

It  was  mean  to  remind  Pullar  of  his  former 
quick  change  of  clients,  but,  after  all,  if  Pullar 
were  going  to  be  in  business,  he  had  got  to  get 
used  to  these  things.  Pullar  blushed  and  replied, 
"Yes— and  others." 

"All  local?" 

"All  local." 

Stiles  looked  at  him  a  longer  time.  It  had  not 
needed  the  shrewd,  almost  cruel  question  of  Rose 
Fuller,  a  moment  before,  to  tell  him  where  the 
value  of  this  property  lay  with  these  people. 
Even  the  hole  two  hundred  feet  deep  had  not 
raised  any  hopes  of  a  copper-mine.  He  knew  that 
he  could  talk  to  Pullar  as  he  liked  to  talk  to  a  man. 

"Mr.  Pullar,"  he  asked,  after  some  thought, 
"would  it  make  any  difference  if  I  told  you  that 
Eksberger  is  not  going  to  turn  this  place  into  a 
moving-picture  park?" 

Pullar  himself  was  a  long  time  in  replying.  He 
blew  the  hot  coals  off  the  top  of  his  pipe,  dre.v  at 
it  deeply,  and  then  watched  the  smoke.  "Not  a 
great  deal,"  he  said,  at  last. 

The  two  men  were  getting  together  now,  nearer 
than  Stiles  had  been  able  to  get  with  any  one  with 
whom  he  had  talked  in  the  past  few  days,  not  even 
excepting  Rose  Fuller,  but  the  very  degree  to 
which  they  were  beginning  to  understand  each 
other  made  confidence  more  dangerous.  Neverthe- 
less, Stiles  made  an  attempt  to  reach  it. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  145 

"Pullar,"  he  asked,  suddenly,  "what  was  the 
Crater  ghost?" 

In  spite  of  his  boyish  weakness,  in  spite  of  his 
queer  streaks  of  yokel,  there  was  a  fine  strain  in 
this  tweedy  young  man  who  lived  his  life  largely 
for  motors  and  trout-flies.  He  did  not  evade  the 
question.  He  merely  pondered  on  how  to  meet  it 
squarely,  seeking  help  from  his  real  companion, 
his  big  black  pipe. 

"What  is  the  usual  ghost  of  a  country  gentle- 
man?" he  asked,  suddenly. 

"Rum?" 

"Rum." 

"Did  you  ever  know  your  uncle?"  asked  Pullar, 
a  minute  later. 

"No." 

Pullar  smoked  a  long  time.  Stiles  himself  had 
to  reopen  the  conversation. 

"I  think  I  get  you,"  he  said.  "Then  seeing  a 
nephew  come  along  with  unknown  antecedents 
and  midnight  parties  and — " 

"Heavens  and  earth,  Stiles,"  interrupted  Pullar, 
"I've  got  some  sense!" 

Perhaps  if  Stiles  had  been  allowed  to  finish  the 
sentence  he  would  have  said  all  that  there  was  to 
say,  but  such  sudden  confidences,  once  interrupted, 
are  rarely  finished,  least  of  all  to  a  man  like  Pullar 
and  in  the  broad  sunlight.  The  two  men  had  been 
walking  all  the  while  they  had  talked.  They  had 
walked  rods  past  the  house  and  had  started  to 
turn  when  Pullar  stood  still.  He  seemed  always 


i46  CRATER'S    GOLD 

to  have  a  guilty  conscience  of  some  kind,  or  at 
least  some  fear  of  leaving  a  sting  or  of  trampling 
on  somebody's  code.  As  usual,  Stiles  had  to  help 
him  out. 

"So  the  old  gentleman  was  a  good  deal  of  a 
rotter?" 

"A  good  deal,"  confessed  Pullar.  He  struggled 
again,  and  at  last  he  made  it.  "Stiles,  you  have 
no  idea  what  such  things  get  to  in  the  country — a 
country  like  this — and  with  a  man  like  that — 
nothing  to  do  all  day  long — practically  nobody  of 
his  own  kind  to  see  eight  months  in  the  year.  In 
the  old  days  it  was  probably  all  right.  They  all 
did  it  then.  They  said  that  when  he  was  younger 
he  was  a  dandy.  I  can  believe  it.  He  was  a  Yale 
man,  famous  in  his  time,  I've  heard.  You  knew 
that  the  family  was  all  split  up?" 

Of  course  Stiles  knew  it.  That  was  why  his 
own  mother  had  been  brought  up  among  distant 
relations,  why  he  himself  had  known  of  Eden  only 
in  legend.  He  nodded,  and  Pullar  went  on : 

"I  guess,  then,  you  never  knew  how  far  it  went. 
While  the  old  major  was  alive — his  father — it 
wasn't  so  bad.  He  was  just  a  good  deal  of  a  prob- 
lem, that's  all.  Of  course  I  don't  remember;  but 
after  the  major  died — holy  smoke!" 

"Simply  a  case  of  packing  a  jug  into  a  room  and 
staying  therefor  a  week?"  suggested  Stiles,  bluntly. 

' '  Oh,  that  was  mild, "  answered  Pullar.  ' '  When 
he  couldn't  get  whisky  it  was  Jamaica  ginger  and 
alcohol  mixed  fifty-fifty  with  water  and  bay  rum 


CRATER'S    GOLD  147 

and  wintergreen  extract  and  oil  of  vitriol,  so  they 
tell  me. ' '  Even  at  that  brutal  moment  Pullar  would 
not  have  been  Pullar  if  he  had  not  tried  to  make  it 
easier.  "  But  he  wasn 't  the  only  one.  Some  funny 
things  have  happened  up  in  these  hills.  Only, 
naturally,  people  did  not  come  here  a  great  deal. 
That  was  what  my  wife  meant." 

"So  I  gathered,"  said  Stiles,  simply. 

"Used  to  shoot  at  'em  with  a  shot-gun  when  he 
was  bad,"  explained  Pullar,  with  his  passion  for 
reminiscence.  "Nearly  killed  a  boy  once." 

The  two  men  started  walking  again,  just  to  make 
the  moment  more  tolerable. 

"Was  that  all  he  did?"  asked  Stiles,  at  last, 
"drink?" 

"No,"  replied  Pullar,  briefly. 

Stiles  had  no  need  to  ask  any  more,  and  he 
walked  along  silently.  So  far  as  Pullar  was  con- 
cerned, which  meant  Mrs.  Pullar  and  old  Colonel 
Cady  and  the  local  money  (places  you'd  never 
suspect  it) ,  his  mystery  was  solved  and  the  answer 
was  even  more  sordid  than  he  had  feared.  The 
gold-mine  for  them  on  the  old  Crater  place  was  to 
dig  the  Crater  family  out  of  it,  root  and  branch — 
to  burn  out  the  plague  spot  and  all  the  queer 
creatures  it  seemed  to  attract. 

"But  he  left  money,"  he  did  say  at  last;  "a 
good  deal  of  money." 

"Thanks  to  Judge  Tyler,"  said  Pullar. 

Stiles  looked  up  sharply.  "Then  the  judge  re- 
mained his  friend  in  spite  of  all?" 


i48  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Pullar's  lips  closed  in  a  smile  over  the  stem  of 
his  pipe.  "I  don't  know  as  friend  would  be  the 
word  to  describe  it.  Judge  Tyler  was  one  of 
many  he  threatened  to  shoot — damning  and  mut- 
tering up  and  down  the  village  street  when  he 
was  on  the  wild.  You  know  the  sort." 

Even  that  taciturn  man  saw  that  his  words 
needed  explanation.  "The  judge  wasn't  his  con- 
servator," he  said.  "He  just  took  charge  of  the 
property  bodily  and  kept  it — kept  it  for  him,  of 
course.  Walked  into  the  bank,  for  all  I  know, 
and  told  them  to  give  it  to  him.  He  used  to  dole 
out  old  Crater's  own  money — your  uncle's  own 
money — a  dollar  at  a  time.  If  it  hadn't  been  for 
the  judge,  he  would  have  died  in  the  poorhouse. 
Still,  I  suppose  you  couldn't  blame  him  for  claim- 
ing the  judge  had  robbed  him." 

He  looked  at  Stiles  anxiously  to  see  what  he 
would  think  of  this  high-handed  exhibition  of  local 
finance,  but  Stiles's  eyes  were  twinkling. 

"No  wonder,"  he  said,  "that  the  judge  was  not 
over-friendly." 

Pullar  straightened  with  interest.  ' '  You've  met 
him,  then?" 

Stiles  nodded. 

"How  did  he  act?" 

"He  wasn't  bad.    We're  good  friends  by  now." 

Pullar  appeared  relieved,  while  Stiles  mused 
over  the  strange,  strange  story.  There  came  to 
his  mind  the  earlier  story  the  judge  had  told.  He 
wondered  if  the  old  man  had  had  a  moral  purpose^ 


CRATER'S   GOLD  149 

in  telling  it.  Probably  not;  the  judge  was  too 
much  the  born  antiquarian  for  that;  but,  almost 
for  Pullar's  sake,  he  remarked.  "This  was  a  great 
crowd  of  mine!" 

He  said  it  as  a  man  does  say  those  things,  with 
a  fine  show  of  humor,  but  no  man  ever  felt  very- 
gay  at  the  discovery  of  a  skeleton  like  this  in  the 
family  closet — in  recent  history,  at  any  rate.  He 
felt  no  animosity  toward  Pullar  and  the  people 
for  whom  he  was  acting.  He  did  not  blame  them 
for  what  they  were  trying  to  do.  For  the  first 
time  he  really  saw  himself  as  he  must  have  ap- 
peared to  Pullar's  wife,  and  his  scorn  for  the  good 
lady  was  not  now  so  high  and  mighty.  What 
she  had  seen  had  been  an  unknown  sprout  of  that 
unhappy  race  who  kept  sullenly  to  himself  and 
persisted  in  letting  the  place  go  to  rack  and  ruin, 
who  slouched  through  the  streets  in  neglected 
garments  and  cynically  told  Pullar  himself  that 
the  place  meant  what  it  would  bring,  and  noth- 
ing more;  the  overturned  motor  in  front  of  the 
door;  the  first  visitor  a  man  who  looked  like  a 
pawnbroker;  the  house  guests  a  flashy  Broadway 
notable  and  an  unexplained  girl — 

But  in  his  self-abasement,  Stiles  had  carried  his 
argument  just  too  far.  With  a  sudden  flash  he 
remembered  who  the  unexplained  girl  had  proved 
to  be.  He  almost  laughed. 

"Pullar,"  he  said,  "I  can't  give  you  an  answer 
now." 

Odd  to  say,  in  spite  of  his  orders,  in  spite  of 


150  CRATER'S   GOLD 

what  must  await  him  at  home  and  in  the  house 
of  his  brother-in-law,  Pullar  did  not  seem  upset. 
He  even  seemed  rather  glad.  One  cannot  tell  a 
story  as  Pullar  had  told  it  without  a  reflex  of 
compassion. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  replied.  "Take  your 
time,  and  when  you  can — " 

They  continued  to  the  house,  and,  with  a  wave 
of  his  hand,  Pullar  drove  off  with  his  colonel. 
Stiles  looked  around,  but  Rose  was  not  to  be  seen. 
He  started  to  search  inside,  when  he  heard  his 
name,  and,  after  a  minute,  he  located  Eksberger's 
head  bobbing  back  up  the  slope  of  the  hill.  The 
gray-checked  suit  had  been  stripped  down  to 
shirt-sleeves.  Eksberger's  hair  was  mussed,  and 
on  his  face  was  a  very  queer  look.  He  motioned 
with  his  hand,  and,  as  Stiles  hurried  forward, 
Eksberger  caught  his  arm  as  if  to  lead  him  away. 
As  Stiles  followed  with  him  he  looked  to  the  right 
and  the  left. 

"Stiles,"  he  said,  in  a  very  low  voice,  "they 
were  right.  There's  no  car  down  there  in  the 
brook." 

Stiles  looked  at  him  blankly,  uncertain  as  to 
whether  or  not  he  should  laugh. 

"And  what's  more,"  gasped  Eksberger,  "there 
isn't  any  brook!" 


CHAPTER  XVII 

T  UDGE  TYLER,  characteristic  enough,  and  aris- 
<J  tocratic  enough,  in  a  new  paneled-box  run- 
about, pulled  up  his  horse  on  the  bridge  and  gazed 
philosophically  at  Eksberger  and  Stiles,  who  were 
standing  below  on  a  mud-flat  of  clay  and  irregular 
stones  that  once  had  been  brook.  At  the  clump 
of  hoofs  on  the  boards  above  him,  Stiles  looked  up. 

"Judge,  the  earth  has  opened  and  swallowed 
our  automobile." 

The  judge  snuffled  in  that  not  altogether  pleas- 
ant way  that  he  had.  "I  mistrusted  it  might,"  he 
said,  calmly. 

In  his  hand  Eksberger  held  a  guide-book,  with 
splotches  of  dried  clay  on  the  black  leather  bind- 
ing, and  a  torn  piece  of  top  cover,  the  only  relics 
which  remained  of  the  car,  but,  as  the  judge  spoke, 
the  lesser  of  the  garage  men  came  up  and  handed 
him  a  second  fragment  of  canvas.  Eksberger 
futilely  tried  to  match  them  together,  as  if  that 
would  prove  anything.  The  leading  garage  man 
was  kicking  morosely  in  the  mud  with  the  heel  of 
his  shoe. 

"I  was  coming  up  now  to  warn  you,"  explained 

the  judge.    "They  told  me  your  car  had  fell  off 
11  ' 


i52  CRATER'S   GOLD 

this  bridge,  and,  thinks  I,  'If  they  don't  get  that 
out  pretty  soon,  they  like  not  to  get  it  out  at  all.' ' 

Stiles  looked  at  him  uncertainly.  "What  is  it? 
Quicksand?" 

The  judge  chuckled.  "Would  you  be  standing 
there  if  it  was?" 

Eksberger  moved  uneasily  toward  what  had 
once  been  the  shore,  and  even  Stiles  followed  at  a 
more  leisurely  pace. 

"No,"  said  the  judge,  "it  ain't  quicksand." 
He  paused  abruptly  and  became  all  attention. 
' '  Hark !"  he  commanded. 

Even  the  garage  men  obeyed  the  command  and 
stood  listening  intently,  but  no  one  heard  anything 
except  the  panting  of  the  judge's  coach-dog  under 
the  runabout.  For  a  moment  even  the  dog  stopped 
panting,  but,  hearing  nothing,  judged  it  a  false 
alarm  and  began  again. 

The  mind  in  touch  with  the  soil  seems  to  fall 
naturally  into  anecdote  in  preference  to  direct 
narration. 

"They  was  a  feller,"  explained  the  judge,  "come 
through  here  fifty  or  sixty  years  back  with  a  large 
herd  of  cattle.  They  used  to  do  it  in  those  days — • 
drovers  they  called  'em.  Used  to  come  from  'way 
up  in  York  State — Canada,  some  of  'em.  They'd 
be  one  or  two  men  and  a  couple  o'  dogs.  They'd 
work  their  way  very  slowly  down  through  the 
country,  letting  the  cattle  graze  by  the  roadside, 
buying  and  selling  as  they  went.  Nights  they  used 
to  turn  'em  out  into  some  farmer's  lot — eat  a  pile 


CRATER'S   GOLD  153 

of  grass  in  one  night,  too,  a  big  drove  o'  cattle 
would.  Sometimes  they  would  turn  'em  into  places 
they  had  special  near  the  old  taverns,  and  then 
they  had  to  feed  'em  cornstalks,  but  that  was 
mostly  when  they  wanted  to  give  'em  salt.  In 
those  tavern  yards  the  earth  would  be  trampled 
down  as  much  as  two  feet  below  the  level  of  the 
ground  around  it. 

"Major  Crater — your  grandfather,"  continued 
the  judge,  "was  living  here  then,  but  he  was  away 
from  home  when  this  drover  come  along  with  his 
cattle — young  stock  mostly.  Bugby,  his  name  was. 
He  had  a  brother  that  made  a  fortune  selling 
clocks  through  the  South  before  the  war.  I  saw 
him  some  years  ago  in  Springfield,  but  this  Bugby 
I  never  seen  from  that  day  to  this. 

"Well,  seems  that  day  he  had  drove  his  cattle 
farther  than  usual — all  the  way  from  Seymour,  in 
fact.  It  was  a  dretful  dry  year  and  he  couldn't 
find  no  water.  So  when  night  come  and  he  see 
this  meadow  with  a  nice  brook  running  through  it, 
he  turned  them  critters  in  here  without  asking 
aye,  yes,  or  no — two  hunderd  and  thirty-six  head 
in  all.  Then  he  went  up  to  Center  for  the  night, 
this  Bugby  did,  thinking  they  was  all  right;  but 
when  he  come  back  in  the  morning,  eight  of  his 
best  steers  was  gone,  seven  black-and-white  ones 
and  one  brindle  with  a  crooked  horn.  Gosh!  he 
was  the  maddest  man!" 

The  memory  of  Bugby's  ire  seemed  pleasing  to 
the  judge's  contemplation.  He  paused  for  a 


154  CRATER'S   GOLD 

period  that  promised  to  be  indefinite;  but  when 
Eksberger  had  wondered  whether  the  judge  had 
ever  been  in  the  show  business,  he  had  spoken 
more  wisely  than  he  knew,  for  here,  with  a  ten- 
thousand-dollar  car  vanished  from  the  face  of  the 
earth  and  a  whole  brook  gone  with  it,  the  four 
of  them  stood  there  absorbed  in  the  tale  of  the 
dead  and  gone  Bugby.  Even  the  head  garage 
man  had  ceased  his  kicking,  while  the  coach-dog 
panted  only  in  the  pauses  and  stopped  to  listen 
whenever  the  judge  began  to  talk  again. 

"He  was  mad,  eh?"  prompted  Eksberger. 

"Who?"  asked  the  judge.  "The  drover?  I 
should  say  he  was  mad.  He  took  his  whip  and 
went  up  to  Major  Crater,  surly  as  a  buck  maggot. 
Major  Crater  he'd  come  back  then. 

"'Major,'  says  Bugby,  'I'd  thank  you  to  tell 
me  where  them  steers  is.' 

"'What  steers?'  says  the  major,  knowing  all 
the  time. 

"'Eight  prime  steers  that  was  in  your  lot  last 
night,'  says  Bugby.  'Seven  black-and-white  ones 
and  one  brindle  with  a  crooked  horn.' 

"'Well,  while  we're  doing  our  thanking,'  says 
the  major,  'I'd  thank  you,  sir,  to  tell  me  who 
ever  gave  you  leave  to  turn  your  condemmed 
stock  into  my  meadow,  trampling  all  the  second 
cutting.' 

"And  of  course,"  said  the  judge,  "he  had  him 
there.  He  come  right  off  his  high  horse,  this 
Bugby  did.  Hemmed  and  hawed  and  talked  about 


CRATER'S   GOLD  155 

meaning  to  pay,  but  that  was  the  kind  of  man  the 
old  major  was. 

"'Now  you  look  here,  Mister  Drover  Bugby,' 
he  says,  'them  steers  may  be  right  up  in  my  barn, 
for  all  you'll  ever  know,  but  if  you  don't  get  the 
rest  of  them  critters  off  my  meadow  just  as  fast 
as  the  devil  and  Doctor  Foster  will  let  you,  you 
won't  even  have  as  many  as  you  got  now.' 

"And  that,"  said  the  judge,  as  if  it  were  the 
whole  point  to  the  story,  "was  all  the  satisfaction 
he  ever  got.  A  great  man  for  his  rights  the  major 
was,  and,  so  long  as  Bugby  had  trespassed,  he 
was  more  than  willing  to  let  him  go  on  thinking 
he  had  those  cattle  right  in  his  barn.  Course  he 
knew  where  they  was  all  the  time." 

"Where  were  they?"  asked  Eksberger. 

"Same  place  your  car  is,"  replied  the  judge. 

A  curious  instinct  for  dialogue,  the  heritage  of 
both  these  men,  Eksberger  and  Judge  Tyler, 
seemed  to  bridge  all  their  natural  differences  and 
draw  them  together,  to  give  them  the  art  of 
handling  each  other.  For  all  his  racial  kinship 
with  the  judge,  Stiles  had  already  noticed  that 
Eksberger  was  far  better  able  than  he  to  draw 
out  the  old  man.  The  one  from  his  vast  fund  of 
folk-lore,  the  other  from  his  years  of  training  in 
the  rapid  fire  of  current  drama,  had  acquired  an 
infallible  ear  for  the  turn  of  a  story.  To  get  the 
most  from  this  moment  Eksberger  did  just  the 
right  thing.  He  said  nothing  and  waited.  The 
judge  rewarded  his  listener's  talent. 


156  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"I  always  understood,"  he  explained,  "that  it 
was  almost  exactly  eight  thousand  miles  from  here 
to  a  point  in  the  outskirts  of  Sydney,  Australia. 
Just  how  far  your  car  has  got  at  the  moment  and 
just  where  them  steers  air,  I  can't  rightly  tell  you 
except  that  they're  both  some  distance  nearer  to 
Sydney  than  we  be." 

"That's  all  very  good,"  replied  Eksberger,  ap- 
parently now  at  liberty  to  talk,  "but  those  steers 
weren't  worth  ten  thousand  dollars,  and  my 
car  is." 

"That's  a  pile  o*  money,"  replied  the  judge. 
The  size  of  the  pile  apparently  drove  all  the 
whimsy  out  of  him  and  restored  him  to  a  business 
basis.  "Mr.  Eksberger,"  he  continued,  in  a 
purely  matter-of-fact  tone,  "the  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  your  car  has  fell  into  the  Eden 
copper-mine." 

All  four  of  them,  even  the  garage  men,  looked 
up,  open-mouthed. 

"Then  there  really  is  a  copper-mine  there?" 
asked  Stiles,  eagerly. 

The  judge  looked  at  him  suddenly,  as  if,  in  the 
sympathetic  dialogue  with  Eksberger,  he  had  com- 
pletely forgotten  his  presence. 

"Copper-mine?"  he  replied.  "Bless  you,  yes! 
That  hill  o'  yourn  is  one  mass  of  tunnels  and 
passages  under  the  ground.  Otherwise,  how 
would  old  Major  Crater  have  known  where  them 
steers  had  gone?" 

Eksberger,  sympathetic  as  he  was  for  an  anec- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  157 

dote,  had  also  a  sense  of  shrewdness  unsated. 
"But  look  here,  Judge,"  he  demanded,  "if  that 
car  fell  in  here,  where  is  the  hole?" 

The  judge  shook  his  head.  "You'll  have  to 
ask  some  one  more  acquainted  with  such  matters 
than  me."  Again  he  paused,  listening,  and  this 
time  his  face  lighted  with  satisfaction.  "There!" 
he  exclaimed.  "Listen  there!  Do  you  hear 
running  water?" 

Again  all  four  of  them  listened,  and  this  time 
all  of  them  heard  what  the  judge  directed,  or  said 
that  they  did. 

' '  There ! ' '  concluded  the  judge.  ' '  You  walk  up- 
stream about  thirty  or  forty  rod  round  the  hill 
in  them  birches,  and,  'less  I'm  mistaken,  you'll 
find  what's  become  of  your  brook." 

The  four  stood  uncertain,  awaiting  a  leader, 
but  it  was  apparently  a  rule  of  the  judge's  rhetoric 
that,  when  no  one  asked  or  expected  an  explana- 
tion, one  should  be  given  freely. 

"You  ask  me  where  is  the  hole?"  he  volunteered. 
"Well,  that's  something  you'll  have  to  ask  of  an 
engineer,  but  I  can  tell  you  this — that  times  has 
be'n  when  the  earth  caves  in  here  and  the  water 
starts  running  in  after  it.  What  happens  then  I 
don't  know.  I  mistrust  it  gets  to  running  and 
raising  hullabaloo  around  in  those  passages  under 
the  ground  and  wears  the  top  thin,  for  every  time 
that  it  happens  the  stream  goes  into  the  earth 
up  there  in  that  spot  that  it's  going  in  now  and 
this  spot  fills  up.  Then  when  it  takes  a  notion, 


i$8  CRATER'S    GOLD 

or  perhaps  when  the  water  gets  higher,  it  quits 
going  in  there  and  begins  to  mind  its  business 
again  on  the  surface." 

Over  Eksberger's  face  came  that  same  half- 
credulous,  half-doubting  expression  with  which 
he  had  greeted  Stiles's  expos6  of  his  own  apocry- 
phal manuscript. 

"But,  Judge,"  he  argued,  "why  didn't  some- 
body warn  us  of  that  when  the  car  first  fell  in 
the  brook?" 

The  judge  laughed.  "Not  everybody  in  this 
town  is  as  old  as  I  be,  and  even  I  didn't  know 
that  you  and  young  Pullar  meant  to  blow  it  up 
like  a  powder-mill.  If  you  hadn't  done  that  your 
automobile  might  have  be'n  here  yet.  The  old 
creek  has  be'n  behaving  herself  as  long  as  most 
people  living  now  can  remember.  So  far  as  I 
know,  your  car  is  the  first  as  has  took  the  trip 
sence  Bugby's  steers." 

There  was  small  consolation  in  that  honor  for 
Eksberger.  Irresolute,  he  began  the  garage  man's 
idiotic  plan  of  digging  the  dirt  with  his  heel,  but 
Stiles  had  a  mind  that  groped  farther  back  into 
history  even  than  Bugby's  steers.  The  Revolu- 
tionary story  came  to  his  mind,  and  the  un- 
avenged bride.  Vistas  opened  before  him.  It 
was  typical  that  that  appealed  to  him  more  than 
the  copper. 

"I  wonder  what  else  you'd  find  in  those  under- 
ground tunnels  if  you  dared  to  go  down." 

The    judge    snorted.      "Young    man,    if   you 


CRATER'S    GOLD  159 

dared  to  go  down  those  tunnels  and  you  wore 
the  right  kind  of  glasses,  you'd  find  about 
twenty-eight  thousand  dollars  of  your  ancestors' 
hard-earned  money  and  ten  or  twelve  thousand 
of  mine." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

"AS  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  pounds,  shillings,  and 
**•  pence  that  was  sunk  in  that  mine,  mostly," 
explained  the  judge,  "but  I  figured  it  out  once, 
and  that  was  about  what  it  come  to — thirty  to 
forty  thousand  dollars — calc'lating  a  pound  ster- 
ling at  four  eighty-four." 

It  was  not  particularly  to  Eksberger's  discredit 
that  the  denomination  of  the  money  failed  to 
suggest  to  him  the  approximate  date  of  the  cop- 
per enterprise.  The  judge,  indeed,  took  it  for 
granted  that  it  meant  nothing  to  Stiles,  and  he 
explained  painstakingly,  as  he  was  doubtless  ac- 
customed to  doing  for  a  dull  and  dispirited  gen- 
eration incurious  as  to  its  forebears.  "Course  we 
never  had  any  dollars  or  such  things  until  after 
the  Revolution — nor  for  some  time  after.  Forty 
thousand  dollars  then,"  he  added,  "meant  a  lot 
more  than  forty  thousand  dollars  would  now — 
two  or  three  hundred  thousand,  if  you  figure  it 
that  way." 

"And  all  gone  to  pot?"  asked  Eksberger, 
quickly. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know,"  replied  the 
judge.  "They  may  have  got  something  out  of  it. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  161 

During  the  war,  probably  they  did,  but  you  can 
put  this  down  for  certain — more  has  gone  into  that 
hole  than  ever  come  out  of  it." 

"Including  my  car,"  suggested  Eksberger. 

"And  Bugby's  steers,"  added  the  judge,  with- 
out smiling. 

Judge  Tyler's  conversation  was,  in  one  respect, 
like  a  gas-engine.  It  had  every  power  except 
that  of  starting  alone.  Eksberger  might  have  been 
able  to  tell  the  dramatic  reason  for  it,  but  the 
fact  was  that  the  speaker  had  to  be  started  with 
twists  and  crankings.  The  first  two  or  three  ques- 
tions were  certain  to  meet  with  evasion,  if  not 
with  downright  rebuff.  Then,  after  three  or  four 
minutes  of  sparring,  when  all  the  auditors  had 
given  up  hope  of  learning  anything,  pop!  some- 
thing would  catch  and  the  judge  would  be  off  for 
as  long  as  any  one  wanted  to  listen. 

The  three  men  were  sitting  now  on  the  un- 
painted  piazza,  in  carpet-back  chairs,  with  cro- 
cheted antimacassars  which  had  been  purloined 
from  the  old  parlor  and  which  looked  singularly 
inappropriate  for  an  outdoor  life.  The  judge  had 
had  this  satisfaction,  that  exploration  by  Stiles, 
Eksberger,  and  the  garage  men  had  proved  abso- 
lutely his  theory  regarding  the  brook.  Around  the 
point  of  the  hill  and  among  the  scrub  growths  the 
stream  had  been  found  flowing  merrily  into  a  hole 
in  the  turf,  the  bubbles  and  eddies  positively 
crowding  one  another  for  chances  to  fling  them- 
selves into  the  orifice,  as  if  all  agog  for  the  novel 


162  CRATER'S   GOLD 

fun.  The  judge  had  received  their  report  with  a 
certain  grim  pleasure,  but  had  declined  invitations 
to  go  down  and  see  for  himself.  He  had  seen  it 
before — fifty  or  sixty  years  back,  to  be  sure,  but, 
like  his  shipwreck  near  Singapore  and  his  exit  from 
Harvard  College,  once  in  a  lifetime  was  enough 
for  that  sort  of  thing.  He  had,  however,  accepted 
the  invitation  for  the  porch.  The  garage  men  had 
left  in  disgust.  They  were  mechanicians,  it  ap- 
peared, and  not  placer  miners. 

"No,"  said  the  judge,  "it  ain't  so  strange  that 
more  didn't  think  to  tell  you  about  that  cave-in. 
I  suppose  there's  one  and  another  in  town  has 
heard  the  story,  but  those  things  get  forgot.  The 
last  work  done  in  the  mine  was  in  eighteen  hunderd 
and  eleven,  so  I've  always  understood.  They  was 
some  talk  of  starting  it  up  again  during  the 
Civil  War  when  they  needed  metal  for  making 
fire-boxes  of  railroad  engines.  They  used  to  make 
them  of  copper  then,  but  they  sent  some  one  up 
to  look  it  over,  and  they  found  the  vein  wasn't 
worth  the  working." 

The  judge  stopped  abruptly  and  looked  at 
Stiles  suspiciously.  Stiles  had,  in  fact,  changed 
expression,  but  he  had  never  imagined  that  the 
judge  had  noted  it. 

"No,"  said  the  judge,  with  a  smile,  "you'd 
better  not  make  any  plans  for  taking  a  fortune 
out  of  that  copper-mine.  If  they  was  money  to 
be  made  out  of  that  we'd  all  be  living  in  mansions 
now  where  the  white  birches  is  still  growing." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  163 

Stiles  smiled  guiltily  and  the  judge  let  him  off. 
"No,"  he  said,  musingly,  "mines  is  for  miners  and 
farms  is  for  farmers,  and  them  as  don't  have  to 
be  either  had  best  keep  to  something  comparatively 
cheap,  like  race-horses  or  vain  embellishments  of 
the  flesh.  It  hain't  troubled  me  much,  what  with 
the  stock-market  and  all,  but  my  father  had  all 
he  could  do  to  keep  this  town  from  ruining  itself 
about  once  a  year  with  dreams  of  taking  a  fortune 
out  of  that  old  mine." 

The  judge  chuckled.  "And,  land  o'  living!  I 
don't  know  but  what  he'd  better  have  let  'em 
go  at  it,  at  that." 

The  engine  of  reminiscence  was  running 
smoothly  once  more,  and,  as  it  did  at  its  best,  was 
soaring  over  the  whole  field  of  history. 

"The  Craters  was  West  Injy  merchants  from 
Salem — not  your  branch,  young  man — another 
branch,  but  the  money  come  to  your  family  'way 
back  in  colony  days.  They  was  already  settled  up 
here,  owning  nobody  knows  how  much  land,  clear 
up  to  Spicer,  so  I've  always  heerd.  Then  come  this 
idea  of  the  copper-mine  and  people  went  crazy, 
I  suppose,  just  as  they  do  now.  Some  claim  it  was 
in  seventeen  seventy-one  that  they  started  to  mine 
for  it,  but  nobody  knows,  nobody  knows.  They 
got  miners  to  come  here,  a  dozen  or  more — men 
that  understood  about  copper-mines,  foreigners." 

"From  Wales?"  suggested  Stiles. 

"No,"  said  the  judge,  as  if  it  were  a  common- 
place, "they  was  Spaniards." 


164  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Stiles's  newspaper  mind  raced  to  the  point. 
Since  the  evening  before,  his  literary  instinct  had 
not  been  able  to  reconcile  that  Bolivian  bride 
with  what  he  knew  of  New  England.  In  what 
tangled  web  of  tradition  started  by  Viscayan 
miners  had  that  myth  originated? 

"They  was  some  queer  kind  of  Spaniards," 
went  on  the  judge.  ' '  Other  Spaniards,  sailors  and 
such,  couldn't  understand  'em." 

"Basques?"  said  Stiles,  quickly. 

"What's  that?"  asked  the  judge,  sharply. 

"Basques?"  repeated  Stiles,  eagerly. 

"That  may  be  it,"  assented  the  judge.  The 
term  did  not  seem  to  strike  his  ear  familiarly. 
"Some  of  'em  lived  and  died  here  and  left  good 
Yankee  descendants.  Mis'  Fields,  her  family  was 
one  of  'em.  Inchgerry,  they  was  always  called. 
What  their  name  rightly  was  I  don't  know." 

"The  point  is,"  interrupted  Eksberger,  im- 
patiently, "the  mine's  a  lemon." 

The  old  judge  turned  slowly  and  looked  at 
him.  For  once  the  dialogue  expert  had  made  a 
false  move,  and  curiously  similar,  to  Stiles's  eyes, 
was  the  way  in  which  the  judge  turned  on  him 
to  that  in  which  Mrs.  Pullar  had  turned  on  him, 
the  previous  evening.  It  was  equally  futile. 
Eksberger  did  not  even  suspect  the  breath  of 
hostility,  and  the  judge  did  not  press  his  snub. 
The  faintest  suggestion  of  a  smile  alone  crept  into 
the  cobweb  of  lines  around  his  shrewd  old  eyes. 
Fantastically  Stiles  wished  that  Rose  had  been 


CRATER'S    GOLD  165 

there  to  see  it,  and  with  that  came  the  question, 
Where  was  Rose?  For  a  second,  however,  he 
could  not  ask  it,  although  the  mellow  thread  of 
narration  was  broken,  and  the  judge  knew  that 
it  was. 

"Yes,"  he  concluded,  in  a  brief  and  business-like 
summary,  "that  mine  is  chiefly  noted  as  a  first- 
class  miner  of  family  fortunes,  like  a  suit  in  the 
courts.  If  they  did  make  anything  out  of  it 
during  the  Revolution,  it  wa'n't  much.  It  petered 
out  and  then  they  started  it  up  again  and  it 
petered  out  then." 

Reminiscence  had  been  killed  so  far  as  he  was 
concerned,  and  Stiles  knew  that  he  was  free  to 
shake  himself  and  stand  up  and  ask,  "What's  be- 
come of  Miss  Fuller?" 

Eksberger  looked  around  nonchalantly  as  if  he 
expected  to  find  her  on  the  piazza.  She  seemed  to 
come  into  his  notice  little  more  than  that  even 
when  she  was  present.  "I  don't  know,"  he  re- 
plied. "She's  somewhere  about." 

"I  thought  she  was  down  there  with  you," 
said  Stiles.  He  went  into  the  house  and  found 
Mrs.  Fields.  She  had  a  frying-pan  in  her  hand, 
the  bottom  of  which  she  was  scraping  with  a 
piece  of  brown  paper,  and  at  sight  of  her  Stiles 
thought  suddenly  of  the  judge's  new  revelations. 
He  was  ready  to  accord  a  sudden  respect  to  her 
fierce  independence,  now  that  he  knew  that  in  her 
veins  flowed  the  blood  of  the  most  inscrutable 
race  in  Europe,  of  the  slayers  of  Roland,  of  Car- 


166  CRATER'S    GOLD 

men's  Jos6,  and  of  those  mountaineers  who,  by 
all  tradition,  had  rolled  stones  on  Charlemagne's 
army.  There  was  no  disgrace  in  sharing  defiance 
which  had  been  hurled  at  Christian  and  Saracen 
alike. 

"Mrs.  Fields,"  he  began,  and,  to  show  the 
mind  of  the  man,  it  seemed  strange  at  the  mo- 
ment that  he  should  address  her  in  English.  He 
felt  that  he  ought  to  be  fishing  around  for  a 
mutual  patois — "Mrs.  Fields,  have  you  seen  Miss 
Fuller?" 

Mrs.  Fields  scrubbed  noisily  a  moment  without 
replying.  "She's  gone,"  she  answered,  at  last, 
choosing  the  moment  for  her  reply  when  it  had 
the  least  chance  of  being  heard.  On  that  subject, 
however,  Stiles's  ears  were  alert. 

"Gone  where?" 

Mrs.  Fields  scrubbed  some  more.  "She  didn't 
say.  She  took  her  hat  and  left  me  two  dollars." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

HTHE  air  of  a  man  bearing  news  from  a  sick- 
*  room  was  rather  on  Stiles  as  he  joined  the 
judge  and  Eksberger  on  the  piazza.  They  had 
found  something  to  talk  about  during  his  absence, 
but  it  couldn't  have  been  much,  for  it  died  out 
at  his  approach. 

"Miss  Fuller  is  gone,"  said  their  host,  simply. 

For  a  moment  Eksberger  did  not  grasp  it,  then, 
as  it  came  to  him,  he  sat  up. 

"What?" 

"Miss  Fuller  is  gone." 

If  nicety  of  emotion  could  be  measured  on  one 
of  those  neat  little  charts  which  are  used  to  show 
fever,  blood  pressure,  and  heart-beat,  a  straight 
line  drawn  through  the  three  lowest  squares  would 
have  shown  just  about  where  Eksberger  lurked 
most  of  the  time.  Then,  just  as  one  was  relying 
on  that  for  his  maximum,  suddenly,  without 
warning,  his  curve  would  shoot  clear  to  the  high- 
est line,  like  that  of  a  man  who  has  smoked  a 
cigarette  or  envied  his  neighbor  or  done  any  of 
the  things  of  which  chart-makers,  as  a  class, 

disapprove. 
12 


i68  CRATER'S   GOLD 

This  was  one  of  those  moments.  By  his  si- 
lence, Eksberger  atoned  for  all  the  excesses  of  his 
Turkish  manner.  He  was  really  touched.  It  took 
a  certain  boyish  chagrin  like  that  of  the  present 
instant  to  make  one  believe  that  he  really  was 
fond  of  his  Rose. 

"She  needn't  have  done  that,"  he  said.  "I 
would  have  taken  her  back  if  she  only  had  told 
me."  He  looked  at  his  watch.  "How  did  she 
go?  By  the  train?" 

Stiles  shrugged  his  shoulders,  a  most  un-Stiles- 
like  thing  for  him  to  do,  and  one  which  showed 
how  much  he  himself  was  upset.  Even  the 
judge  had  absorbed  the  gentle  spirit  of  the  mo- 
ment. "They's  the  nine-fifty-eight,"  he  volun- 
teered, "and  after  that  they's  the  twelve-six,  and 
then  they's  only  the  six-one  from  Felsted." 

"Twelve-six?"  asked  Eksberger,  taking  out  his 
watch  again,  for  of  course  he  had  not  noticed  in 
the  least  what  the  time  had  been  when  he  had 
done  it  before.  It  was  half  past  twelve,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  but  he  did  not  need  to  announce  it. 
His  face  told  the  story.  All  moments  after  twelve- 
six  were  useless  to  that  little  group  of  three,  for 
even  the  judge  was  subtly  among  the  mourners. 

The  judge  stood  up.  "If  you  are  going  up  to 
Center — "  he  suggested.  Both  Stiles  and  Eks- 
berger were  tacitly  accepting  his  invitation,  when 
a  livery  car  came  rattling  up  the  hill.  It  would 
have  been  ludicrous,  if  it  hadn't  been  so  wholly 
nice,  the  childlike  eagerness  with  which  both  of 


CRATER'S    GOLD  169 

them  looked  at  it,  hoping  that  it  was  all  a  bad 
dream,  that  Rose  had  come  back  to  them.  In- 
stead, it  was  Baumgarten,  smug  and  blue-sergy 
and  giving  a  tip  to  the  man  who  had  driven 
him.  . 

"It's  Stuffy  Baumgarten!"  exclaimed  Eksber- 
ger,  but  his  moments  of  sublimity  were  very  short. 
Disappointment  in  him,  as  in  most  primitive  souls, 
very  soon  reduced  itself  to  a  childish  rage.  ' '  What 
in  thunder  is  that  old  fool  doing  up  here?" 

If  there  was  belligerency  in  Eksberger's  atti- 
tude as  Baumgarten  sauntered  calmly  up  the 
gravel  walk  it  was  as  wholly  lost  as  Mrs.  Pullar's 
grand  manner  had  been  lost  on  Eksberger  himself. 
Nor  was  there  the  least  surprise  in  the  new-comer's 
manner.  ' " Lo,  Charlie !' '  he  began,  calmly.  ' '  How 
are  you,  Mr.  Stiles?" 

If  Stiles  did  not  always  find  himself  one  with 
Eksberger,  they  were  allies  in  this  encounter,  but 
he  had  some  duties  as  a  host.  "Judge  Tyler,  Mr. 
Baumgarten." 

"Pleased  to  meet  you,  Judge,"  nodded  Baum- 
garten, cordially. 

"Morning,"  said  the  judge,  tersely. 

Gruff  as  it  was,  that  was  the  only  actual  greet- 
ing that  Baumgarten  had  yet  received,  but  it  was 
all  the  same  to  him.  He  seated  himself  squarely 
in  the  middle  of  the  group  and  looked  around  at 
the  view  spread  before  him — that  million-dollar 
view.  Having,  on  his  previous  visit,  been  kindly 
patronizing  to  the  interior  of  Stiles's  house,  he 


i7o  CRATER'S   GOLD 

was  now  preparing  to  be  patronizing  to  nature's 
landscape. 

"I  see  Rose  has  gone,"  he  began,  easily. 

His  casual  use  of  the  name  probably  grated  on 
Stiles  more  than  it  did  on  Eksberger,  but  it  irri- 
tated both  of  them  sufficiently  to  keep  either  from 
replying. 

"Saw  her  at  the  station, "Baumgarten  explained. 

"Yes,"  said  Eksberger,  quietly,  "she  had  to 
get  back." 

"They  tell  me  you  smashed  up  the  car,"  per- 
sisted Baumgarten.  It  was  evidently  not  so  much 
a  present  intention  as  a  permanent  habit  of  his 
aggressive  nature  to  touch,  one  after  another,  all 
the  tactless  facts  concerning  the  person  to  whom 
he  was  talking. 

"Yes,"  said  Eksberger,  coldly.  Stiles  expected 
at  any  moment  to  hear  him  break  forth  into  vio- 
lent vituperation,  but,  strangely,  he  seemed  to  be 
restraining  himself. 

"Either  of  you  hurt?" 

"No." 

"Be  able  to  fix  it,  won't  you?" 

As  the  two  were  talking,  a  curious  thing  was  hap- 
pening, a  thing  so  curious  that  Stiles  was  prompted 
to  wonder  whether  it  were  real  or  whether  he  were 
merely  imagining  it.  It  seemed  to  be  a  fact  that 
Eksberger  was  actually  afraid  of  Baumgarten,  at 
least  decidedly  uncomfortable  under  his  cross- 
examination.  Stiles  had  expected  that,  socially, 
Baumgarten  would  last  just  about  three  minutes 


CRATER'S    GOLD  171 

in  Eksberger's  presence.  Instead,  little  by  little, 
Baumgarten  was  becoming  the  relentless  school- 
master and  Eksberger  the  unhappy  school-boy. 
That  was  just  the  quality  of  their  accent — senior 
and  junior,  or,  better,  father  and  son,  and  father 
on  an  unfortunate  morning. 

"Be  able  to  fix  it,  won't  you?" 

Eksberger  had  not  been  able  to  answer,  and 
Baumgarten  had  repeated  the  question  in  really  a 
sharper  tone.  Even  that  had  not  been  resented. 

"Hope  so." 

"Where  is  it?"  demanded  Baumgarten. 

It  was  a  long  time  before  Eksberger  replied. 
Then  he  jerked  his  head  in  a  way  not  dissimilar 
to  that  in  which  the  garage  man  had  done  it. 
"Brook." 

Baumgarten  made  a  motion  to  rise  to  his  feet. 
"Let's  go  have  a  look  at  it." 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it.  The  judge  should 
have  been  a  stage-manager.  He  rose  to  his  feet 
with  a  sudden  chuckle.  "Gentlemen,  I'm  going," 
he  said,  and  it  was  not  until  five  seconds  after 
this  rustic  intellect  had  done  it  that  Stiles  grasped 
the  essence  of  that  incomprehensible  dialogue  to 
which  he  had  just  been  listening — the  utter  ludi- 
crousness  of  the  position  in  which  they  were  placed 
— the  absolute  futility  of  trying  to  make  a  man 
like  Baumgarten  believe  what  really  had  happened. 

The  judge  had,  however,  saved  the  moment  if  it 
was  beyond  the  power  of  mortal  man  to  save  the 
day.  "Whoa,  boy!"  he  called  to  his  horse,  as  he 


i72  CRATER'S    GOLD 

took  the  tie-line  from  its  neck,  but  one  likes  to 
imagine  that  he  was  still  chuckling  as  he  took  the 
reins  from  the  whip-stock  and  then,  as  he  settled 
down  in  the  seat,  called  again,  "Back,  boy,  back!" 
the  command  which  is  given  by  every  rural  driver, 
no  matter  in  which  direction  he  wishes  the  animal 
to  move. 

The  judge  rattled  over  the  top  of  the  hill,  leav- 
ing Eksberger  and  Stiles  to  face  the  new-comer 
alone. 

''You  didn't  stay  away  long,"  said  Eksberger, 
morosely. 

"I  haven't  been  away  at  all,"  replied  Baum- 
garten,  calmly.  "At  least,  no  farther  than  Fel- 
sted."  He  took  from  his  pocket  a  picture  post- 
card, one  done  in  colors,  colors  which  put  nature 
to  shame.  He  handed  it  casually  to  Stiles,  who 
read,  "First  Methodist  Church  and  Soldiers' 
Monument,  Felsted,  Mass." 

"How  many  of  those  do  you  suppose  I  put  out 
a  year?"  asked  Baumgarten,  modestly. 

Stiles  tried  to  think  of  a  figure  which  would 
be  amazing  but  still  leave  the  art-novelty  king  a 
margin  to  spring  his  happy  surprise.  "Hundred 
thousand?"  he  suggested. 

"Five  million,"  said  Baumgarten,  with  a  grin. 

When  Rose  was  absent,  Eksberger  evidently 
played  her  part.  "All  of  the  First  Methodist 
Church?"  he  asked,  promptly. 

Baumgarten's  only  answer  was  a  look  of  con- 
tempt. He  turned  to  Stiles  as  the  man  he  had 


CRATER'S    GOLD  173 

come  to  talk  to.  "I've  done  a  little  business  since 
I've  been  up  here."  He  left  what  he  would  have 
called  an  elegant  opening  for  Stiles  to  tell  how  he 
had  put  in  his  time,  but  Stiles  was  as  non-com- 
mittal as  Eksberger,  and  Eksberger  had  the  air  of 
a  man  with  a  date  to  commit  a  murder.  That  side 
of  it  was  funny  enough  to  Stiles,  and,  after  all, 
what  preference  did  he  really  owe  to  Eksberger? 
Both  men,  he  felt  subtly,  were  fighting  for  a  chance 
to  get  him  alone,  and  neither  one,  so  far  as  he 
could  see,  in  his  capacity  of  host,  had  any  imme- 
diate prospect  of  it.  He  could  hardly  come  out 
from  the  shoulder  and  tell  Baumgarten  to  be  off 
and  about  his  business.  He  was  not  sure  that  he 
would  if  he  could.  Since  that  talk  with  Rose  he 
had  not  looked  at  Baumgarten  with  quite  the 
same  eyes.  In  the  mean  time,  the  three  of  them 
were  strolling  about  the  lawn,  round  and  round, 
a  sort  of  endurance  contest,  all  of  them  talking  in 
monosyllables,  no  one  of  them  daring  to  say  what 
was  on  his  mind,  the  three  of  them  rotating,  really, 
around  a  vacuum.  How  Rose  would  have  loved 
it,  Rose,  whose  sudden  departure  had  caused  the 
vacuum !  And  all  the  time  Eksberger  still  had  that 
uncomfortable  air,  not  at  all  the  manner  that  one 
would  have  expected  him  to  flourish,  judging  by 
his  previous  allusions  to  Baumgarten.  Stiles,  the 
cynic,  began  to  wonder  whether  he  owed  him 
money.  The  thing  couldn't  go  on  forever. 

"Have  you  seen   Pullar?"   Stiles  asked,   sud- 
denly.    Through  the  corner  of  his  eye  he  could 


174  CRATER'S    GOLD 

see  Baumgarten  look  at  him  suspiciously,  but, 
being  prepared,  he  managed  to  wear  an  expression 
of  perfect  innocence. 

"Yes,"  said  Baumgarten,  gruffly,  and  Stiles 
knew  that  the  news  had  been  broken  to  him,  the 
news  about  the  returned  check.  And  round  and 
round  they  kept  on  going.  Eksberger  finally  could 
stand  it  no  longer. 

"Say,  what  is  this,"  he  asked,  "a  merry-go- 
round?" 

Without  meaning  to,  probably,  he  had  forced 
Stiles's  hand,  but  there  was  nothing  else  for  Stiles 
to  do.  He  looked  at  his  watch.  "Pretty  near 
lunch-time,"  he  suggested.  "Will  you  stay,  Mr. 
Baumgarten?" 

Baumgarten  affected  an  attitude  of  surprise. 
"I  had  planned  to  pick  up  a  bite  in  the  village." 
Seeing  that  he  had  just  sent  his  car  to  the  station, 
two  miles  away,  it  was  rather  bald,  but,  at  any 
rate,  Baumgarten  knew  all  the  ceremonies  proper 
to  the  occasion.  He  raised  his  fat,  manicured 
hands  and  turned  them  over  doubtfully.  "If  I 
might  wash  up  a  bit,"  he  suggested,  politely. 


CHAPTER  XX 

"JET  him  take  a  bath  if  he  wants  to,"  exclaimed 
i-'  Eksberger,  savagely,  as  Baumgarten  disap- 
peared into  the  house.  He  turned  to  Stiles,  al- 
most in  a  whispered  haste.  "We've  got  to  get 
rid  of  that  boob.'* 

Eksberger  had,  in  supreme  measure,  the  talent 
of  assuming  that  his  listener's  mood  was  his  own, 
but  even  he  saw  that  his  sudden  change  of  front 
needed  explanation.  He  paused,  disconcerted,  not 
sure  just  how  to  make  it.  Stiles,  for  his  part, 
had  learned  that  his  companion  was  used  to  a 
language  in  which  tact  was  only  a  casual  element. 

"You  act  as  if  you  owed  him  money,"  he  said, 
boldly. 

"I  do,"  replied  Eksberger,  not  in  the  least  up- 
set, "but  it's  not  that.  Everybody  in  the  show 
business  owes  him  money.  That's  what  he  was 
born  for.  But,  good  Heavens!  Stiles,  don't  you  see 
what  I'm  up  against?" 

If  he  had  seen,  Stiles  would  still  have  preferred 
to  get  it  in  Eksberger's  own  words. 

"Stuffy  is  all  right,"  explained  the  exasperated 
impresario,  with  that  grain  of  charity  with  which 


176  CRATER'S    GOLD 

both  he  and  Rose  seemed  to  qualify  every  harsh 
statement,  "but  he's  a  joke,  he's  a  mark,  he's  a 
professional  easy  thing.  And  he  knows  it.  He 
can't  help  knowing  it.  As  long  as  I  can  remember 
he's  been  our  pet  goat.  In  his  own  line,  I  guess  he's 
no  fool,  but  he's  like  lots  of  others,  he's  actor-bit. 
Anybody  in  the  show  business,  he'll  give  anything 
just  to  be  seen  with  them,  and  that's  the  trouble; 
he  knows  them  all.  Just  let  him  get  it  into  his 
noodle  what  really  has  happened  to  that  car,  and, 
after  all  these  years  of  my  kidding  him,  say!  what 
will  he  do  to  me?  What — will — he — do — to — 
little— George— G.— Me  ?" 

To  tell  the  truth,  while  he  saw  the  point,  it 
seemed  to  Stiles  that  Eksberger  was  making  a 
mountain  out  of  a  mole-hill.  His  attitude  showed 
it,  for  Eksberger  turned  in  exasperation. 

"Now  I  ask  you!  Who  will  believe  that  story 
when  once  Stuffy  Baumgarten  begins  to  spread  it 
on  Broadway?  A  ten-thousand-dollar  car  doing  a 
fade-away  into  the  ground — lost,  gone,  covered 
up,  not  even  the  speedometer,  while  we,  like  a 
bunch  of  goops,  sat  here  and  let  it  melt!  Would 
you  believe  it  if  you  heard  it?" 

"No,  I  don't  think  I  should,"  Stiles  had  to 
confess. 

"Well,  then,"  demanded  Eksberger,  "what 
makes  you  think  that  any  one  else  will  believe  it?" 

He  seemed  to  assume  that  Stiles  had  maintained 
that  it  was  an  every-day  event,  but  Stiles  saw  that 
it  was  useless  to  protest. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  177 

"You  don't  seem  to  get  it,"  continued  Eksber- 
ger,  wilder  than  ever.  "Why,  there  won't  be  a 
musical  show  on  Broadway  next  fall  that  won't 
have  something  about  it.  There  won't  be  a  coun- 
try newspaper  next  week  that  won't  have  some- 
thing about  that  cock-and-bull  story,  and  all  the 
while  the  wise  guys  will  be  sitting  around  and  say- 
ing, 'Now  just  what  was  the  real  dope  about 
Eksberger's  car?'  Then  they'll  begin  explaining 
— there'll  always  be  some  one  to  wink  his  eye  and 
nod  his  head  and  tap  your  knee  and  say,  'Now  this 
is  just  between  you  and  I,  but  I've  got  it  straight 
from  a  man  who  knows  that — well,  there's  some- 
thing behind  that  story  that  you  haven't  heard.' 

"Why,  man  alive!"  Eksberger  ranted  on, 
"there'll  be  stories  that  I  haven't  drawn  a  sober 
breath  in  three  years.  I  won't  mind  that,  because 
they  say  that  of  everybody  when  they  can't 
think  of  anything  else  to  say.  But  then  the  funny 
boys  will  get  hold  of  it — ''He  tried  to  make  us 
think  that  his  car  went  on  the  blink!'  They'll 
say  I  smashed  it  up  on  a  spree,  they'll  say  I 
hocked  it.  Sooner  or  later  they'll  say  that  I 
never  had  any  car  at  all.  Can  you  see  what 
will  happen  to  me  the  minute  I  get  to  the 
city?" 

He  paused,  still  fuming,  but  suddenly  his  whole 
manner  changed,  and  he  added,  quietly.  "Besides, 
there's  Rose." 

"Now  you're  talking!"  Stiles  did  not  say  it 
aloud,  but  he  thought  it,  and  immediately  there 


178  CRATER'S    GOLD 

followed  the  finest  moment  in  his  whole  acquaint- 
ance with  Eksberger. 

"Dammit,  Stiles,  the  show  business  gets  it  in 
the  eye  every  time."  He  turned  quietly,  almost 
fiercely.  "You  know  there  was  nothing  queer  in 
my  being  up  here  with  Rose,  don't  you?"  Even 
the  second  that  Stiles  took  to  reply  was  not  short 
enough,  and  he  insisted,  "Don't  you?" 

"Of  course  I  know  it,"  replied  Stiles,  and  Eks- 
berger went  on: 

"What  in  the  world  are  we  to  do?  Sit  in  our 
rooms  with  our  hands  in  our  laps  ?  She  hasn't  got 
any  home.  I  haven't  got  any  home.  We're  not 
six  years  old." 

Stiles  thought  again  of  his  conversation  with 
Rose  that  morning. 

"You  don't  suppose  that  Baumgarten  is  going 
to  spread  that  side  of  it,  do  you?" 

"No,"  said  Eksberger,  slowly,  "but  leaks, 
Stiles,  leaks.  If  the  story  gets  out  at  all  you  might 
just  as  well  try  to  stop  the  ocean  as  cover  a  thing 
like  that." 

From  that  point  of  view  Stiles  was  enlisted,  as 
he  had  been  the  moment  that  Rose's  name  had 
been  mentioned.  Before  that,  having  accepted 
the  whole  situation,  he  had  not  questioned  any 
of  its  minor  ethics.  ' '  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?" 
he  asked. 

"I  wish  you'd  tell  me,"  said  Eksberger.  "So 
far  as  I  can  see,  we've  got  to  dig  it  out  sooner  or 
later.  I  suppose  it  will  cost." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  179 

"Thirty  to  forty  thousand  dollars,"  said  Stiles, 
smiling,  "according  to  the  judge." 

Eksberger,  however,  was  not  in  a  rollicking 
mood.  He  walked  peevishly  back  and  forth  across 
the  piazza,  but  Stiles  had  an  inspiration. 

"Look  here,"  he  exclaimed,  borrowing  a  bit  of 
Eksberger's  own  enthusiasm.  "Why  don't  you 
let  it  stay  just  where  it  is?" 

Eksberger  stopped  walking  and  looked  at  him 
in  query. 

"You  said  last  night  that  it  was  insured?" 

Eksberger  nodded,  but  before  Stiles  could  add 
another  word  they  both  saw  the  flaw.  Eksberger 
voiced  it. 

"Say,"  he  exclaimed,  "I'd  have  a  fat  chance 
to  get  any  money  out  of  any  insurance  company 
with  that  pipe  dream.  They'd  make  me  show 
every  spoke  in  the  wheels." 

There  was  logic  in  this,  and  Stiles  had  no  more 
to  say. 

"Unless  your  tame  brook  coughs  it  up  in  an 
hour  or  two,"  mused  Eksberger,  fretfully,  "the 
only  thing  I  can  think  of  is  to  tell  Stuffy  that 
the  car  had  been  taken  to  the  garage  and  then 
have  it  dug  out  secretly  at  night.  And  there  we 
are!  We've  got  to  act  soon.  Suppose  the  brook 
starts  business  again.  How  are  we  going  to  dig 
down  through  the  water?  If  we  do  it  at  all  we'll 
have  to  do  it  to-night  at  midnight.  What  do 
you  think  of  that  plan?" 

Stiles  did  not  think  much  of  it.     "In  the  first 


i8o  CRATER'S   GOLD 

place,"  he  said,  "it  wouldn't  do  any  good.  The 
garage  men  know  about  it  already.  The  judge 
knows  about  it.  Safe  to  say  everybody  in  town 
knows  about  it.  If  Baumgarten  stays  here  half 
an  hour  longer  he  will  know  about  it,  too.  If  I 
were  you  I  would  simply  tell  him  and  ask  him  to 
keep  it  quiet." 

Eksberger  shook  his  head  vehemently  "Noth- 
ing doing.  Stuffy's  been  waiting  five  years  for  a 
chance  of  this  kind." 

Except  for  Rose,  Stiles  did  not  have  very  much 
patience  with  this  mighty  issue  erected  on  nothing 
but  Eksberger's  own  vanity,  but  the  thing  did 
appeal  to  his  sense  of  humor.  He  looked  con- 
templatively toward  the  lawn,  and  then  he  sug- 
gested suddenly,  "If  that  hill  is  a  honeycomb  of 
underground  passages,  I  wonder  if  there  isn't 
some  other  way  to  get  at  it." 

"Oh,  don't  be  an  ass,  Stiles!"  exclaimed  Eks- 
berger as  if  he  himself  had  been  talking  nothing 
but  sense.  Then  the  potency  of  that  haunted 
house  slowly  caught  him  as  it  had  the  evening 
before.  He  wavered  a  moment  or  two,  and  then 
he  said,  tentatively:  "Let's  go  look  at  that  thing. 
I  haven't  had  really  a  decent  look  at  it  yet." 

Together  they  started  slowly  across  the  lawn, 
when  a  voice  behind  them  boomed  out,  "Well, 
gentlemen!" 

Stiles  started  to  turn,  but  Eksberger  grabbed 
his  arm.  "Quick,"  he  said.  "There's  Stuffy. 
What  are  we  going  to  tell  him?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  181 

"The  truth,  I  guess,"  replied  Stiles.  Pretend- 
ing, nevertheless,  not  to  have  heard  the  voice, 
the  two  continued  their  walk  until  they  paused 
on  the  rampart  of  the  old  cellar.  Over  his  shoul- 
der, Stiles  noticed  that  Baumgarten  was  following 
with  the  air  of  a  king  looking  over  his  realm. 
"Look  here,"  he  said,  speaking  rapidly,  and  only 
because  he  knew  that  Eksberger  was  not  the 
only  one  who  would  suffer  did  he  say  what 
he  did.  "Look  here.  Isn't  there  just  one  per- 
son in  the  world  who  can  keep  him  from  saying 
a  word?" 

For  a  second,  not  knowing  what  Stiles  had 
learned  that  morning,  Eksberger  did  not  grasp  it. 
"Who — ?"  he  began,  and  then  it  flashed  over  him. 
In  violent  congratulation  he  held  out  his  hand. 
"Stiles,  you're  a  genius!" 

"Brother  Elks,  Mr.  Mayor,  and  visiting  fire- 
men!" declaimed  Baumgarten,  seeing  the  gesture. 
He  looked  rather  curious  as  to  its  meaning,  but 
he  did  not  ask  explanations.  "Out  inspecting 
your  property,  Mr.  Stiles?"  he  began,  then  he 
stopped  short  and  looked  at  the  rampart  on 
which  they  were  standing.  ' '  Hello ! "  he  exclaimed, 
and  looked  at  the  rampart  again.  "Stiles,"  he 
said,  suddenly,  for  the  first  time  using  the  fa- 
miliar term,  "I  bet  I  know  something  you  don't 
know." 

"Aw,  Stuffy,  you  know  things  that  nobody 
knows,"  broke  in  Eksberger,  his  poise  completely 
restored,  but  Baumgarten  paid  no  attention  to 


i8i  CRATER'S   GOLD 

him.  He  stared  at  the  pile  of  turf  and  debris 
as  if  to  make  sure,  and  then  he  went  on.  "Did 
you  know  that  you  owned  a  copper-mine?" 

Stiles  looked  at  Eksberger  and  Eksberger 
looked  at  Stiles. 

"Yes,  I  know  it,"  answered  Stiles,  but  he  had 
hesitated  just  a  moment  too  long,  and,  as  Rose 
had  said,  Baumgarten  was  not  such  a  fool  as  he 
had  the  reputation  of  being. 

"How  long  have  you  known  it?"  he  insisted, 
mercilessly. 

Having  just  posed  to  Eksberger  as  an  apostle 
of  truth,  Stiles  felt  it  incumbent  on  him  to  blaze 
the  way.  "About  two  hours,"  he  answered. 
"How  long  have  you?" 

"About  three  minutes,"  confessed  Baumgarten, 
with  equal  frankness.  "I  wondered  who  owned 
that  mine."  He  fished  in  his  pocket  again  and 
brought  out  a  brown  envelop  full  of  his  picture- 
cards.  Sorting  them  over,  he  handed  one  to 
Stiles.  It  showed,  sure  enough,  the  rampart  on 
which  they  were  standing,  and  underneath  it  the 
legend,  "Old  Copper  Mine,  Eden,  Mass." 

"Where  do  you  suppose  the  guy  had  those?" 
continued  Baumgarten. 

"What  guy?"  asked  Eksberger. 

"The  guy  in  the  drug-store.  Underneath  a  pile 
of  candy-boxes  in  the  back  room.  No  wonder  he 
never  sold  any.  Why  don't  you  work  your  mine, 
Stiles?" 

"It's  a  quince,"  explained  Eksberger,  promptly. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  183 

"So?"  replied  Baumgarten,  looking  at  it  mus- 
ingly. "Copper's  valuable  now." 

It  may  have  existed  only  in  the  two  timorous 
minds  with  which  he  was  dealing,  but  it  still  seemed 
to  be  a  fact  that  Baumgarten  had  complete  control 
of  this  little  encounter.  He  turned  in  a  lordly 
manner  to  stroll  back  toward  the  house,  and  the 
two  others  followed,  lamblike. 

"How  do  you  know — ?"  he  began,  and  then  his 
face  brightened.  "Well,  look  who's  here!" 

13 


CHAPTER  XXI 

IT  was  Rose,  true  enough,  but  Rose  looked  tired 
and  not  very  happy.  She  had  come  from  the 
village  on  foot.  The  three  men  simultaneously 
broke  into  what  was  almost  a  run  and  met  her  at 
the  end  of  the  gravel  path. 

"What's  the  matter,  Rose?"  exclaimed  Eks- 
berger.  "Did  you  miss  your  train?" 

The  girl  shook  her  head,  but  gave  no  other 
sign  of  wishing  to  answer.  Solicitously  the  three 
men  followed  her  to  the  piazza,  as  kittens  follow 
a  cat,  and  Stiles  brought  out  one  of  the  carpet- 
backed  chairs.  She  sank  into  it  wearily.  "It's 
hot,"  she  said,  but  she  gave  the  impression  that 
she  was  on  the  verge  of  tears.  Eksberger  hung 
over  her,  worried,  and  the  two  other  men  pre- 
tended to  be  busy  with  the  view.  Lunch  followed 
in  due  course  of  time,  but,  as  one  might  imagine, 
it  was  not  a  vivacious  repast.  Rose  was  calm 
enough  now,  but  she  did  not  pretend  that  she  had 
returned  for  a  social  visit.  Without  ado,  she  singled 
out  Eksberger  at  the  close  of  the  meal  and  they 
walked  away  up  the  road,  the  road  on  which 
Pullar  had  told  his  story  that  morning.  Left  be- 
hind, Baumgarten  and  Stiles  had  that  uncertain 


CRATER'S   GOLD  185 

manner  of  strangers  who  inadvertently  have  been 
forced  to  witness  a  family  quarrel.  Baumgarten 
looked  after  the  two  doubtfully. 

"I  wonder  what's  the  matter  with  Rose." 

He  said  it  in  tones  of  a  real  concern,  and  Stiles 
did  not  resent  it  as  he  had  resented  the  previous 
use  of  her  name.  He  had,  in  fact,  found  himself 
slowly  revising  his  estimates  of  this  man  who  had 
struck  him  so  unpleasantly  at  first,  this  man  at 
whom  Eksberger  shouted  in  such  derision.  After 
his  talk  with  Rose  and  after  seeing  the  two  men 
opposed  to  each  other,  he  was  not  at  all  sure  that 
Baumgarten  was  not  the  finer  character.  He  was, 
at  any  rate,  the  more  substantial.  Baumgarten 
had  been  a  totally  different  man  on  this  visit, 
more  sure  of  himself,  more  certain  in  his  control  of 
others.  Alone,  Stiles  had  found  him  pathetic — 
the  Broadway  type  away  from  his  background. 
Perhaps  that  was  it.  He  had  his  background  now. 

"A  wonderful  girl,  Mr.  Stiles." 

Still  Stiles  did  not  resent  it,  and,  after  all,  what 
right  had  he  to  resent  it  if  Rose  did  not?  He 
wanted  to  talk  about  her  himself,  but,  Stiles-like, 
he  could  only  do  it  by  way  of  a  tangent. 

"Eksberger,"  he  hinted,  tactfully,  "is  quite  a 
genius." 

Baumgarten  held  his  arm  at  full  length  and 
snapped  his  fingers.  "A  child,  Mr.  Stiles,  a  child !" 

He  had  said  in  one  word  what  Stiles  had  sup- 
posed would  be  utter  heresy  in  the  Eksberger 
cult,  and  Stiles  looked  at  him  in  amazement. 


i86  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Have  you  known  him  long?"  he  asked. 

"There's  nobody  in  the  show  business  that  I 
don't  know,"  replied  Baumgarten.  "I've  put 
money  in  some  of  his  shows — most  of  'em,  in 
fact."  He  paused  and  grunted,  but  not  ill- 
naturedly.  "Never  lost  anything  by  it,  and  I 
don't  intend  to." 

Strikingly  like  the  judge  when  a  favorite  subject 
had  been  opened  to  him,  he  went  on  of  his  own 
free  will.  "Charlie  is  the  one  you  hear  about, 
but  Al  Segal,  his  partner,  is  the  real  brains  of  that 
concern.  Know  him?" 

Stiles  shook  his  head. 

"No,"  said  Baumgarten,  "and  few  people  do. 
He  keeps  in  the  dark  as  much  as  Charlie  keeps  in 
the  lime-light. 

"Al  Segal,"  continued  Baumgarten,  "has  for- 
gotten more  than  Charlie  Eksberger  will  ever 
know;  but  there  you  are!  I  wouldn't  give  a  nickel 
to  Al  if  it  had  a  lock  on  it,  but  Charlie  Eksberger 
could  have  anything  I've  got." 

"Perhaps,"  suggested  Stiles,  "that  in  itself  is 
one  form  of  genius." 

"It  may  be,"  replied  Baumgarten,  but  his  tone 
did  not  sound  convinced.  He  turned  and  looked 
at  the  pair  walking  back  and  forth  up  the  road. 
They  might  have  been  in  the  midst  of  a  summer 
proposal  for  the  picture  they  made,  and  a  proposal 
not  very  well  received.  Eksberger  was  walking, 
hatless,  shoulders  hunched,  his  hands  in  his 
pockets,  talking  imploringly,  his  head  making  little 


CRATER'S    GOLD  187 

convulsive  jerks.  Rose  was  replying  only  casually 
and  from  time  to  time,  looking  away,  more  often, 
over  the  fields  to  her  right.  The  only  thing  in  her 
view  was  an  isolated  and  abandoned  chicken- 
house,  gray,  weather-beaten,  and  falling  to  pieces, 
and  beyond  that  a  brown  field  and  the  ever-present 
belt  of  white  birches.  Did  it  strike  her  as  queer 
that  one  of  the  moving  moments  of  her  life,  what- 
ever might  be  the  cause,  should  be  passed  in  that 
homely  and  typical  bit  of  New  England  landscape 
so  little  like  the  scenes  to  which  she  was  accus- 
tomed? Or  did  she  take  it  for  granted,  giving  it 
no  notice  at  all  ? 

It  was  fair  to  believe  that  both  of  the  men 
there  watching  her  were  moved  by  the  same 
mingled  feelings  of  sympathy  and  faint  pique  at 
their  own  exclusion.  If  they  were,  the  older  man's 
longings  were  those  of  hope  too  often  rebuffed  to 
be  reassuring,  the  younger  man's  those  of  hope  too 
recently  born  to  seem  very  real.  For  the  moment, 
the  man  beside  him  became  the  more  vivid  figure 
to  Stiles. 

In  a  few  curt  words  Baumgarten  had  drawn  a 
picture  of  himself  which,  on  the  surface,  was  not 
unlike  that  wriich  Eksberger  had  drawn  of  him, 
but,  in  the  latter,  how  the  values  had  been  dis- 
torted by  Eksberger's  naive  conceit !  By  no  stretch 
of  the  imagination,  even  the  sentimental  imagina- 
tion which  Stiles  possessed  in  spite  of  himself, 
was  it  possible  to  make  Baumgarten  a  noble  char- 
acter, even  a  pleasant  one,  but  it  was  possible  to 


i88  CRATER'S   GOLD 

read  a  certain  crude  aspiration  into  what  he  was 
doing  and  what  he  was.  A  man  to  whom  pictures 
would  never  mean  anything,  except  those  on  a 
card,  a  man  for  whose  untutored  senses  music 
became  bad  as  soon  as  it  became  good,  a  man  by 
whom  fame  and  notoriety  were  wholly  confused, 
he  nevertheless  found  his  glory,  his  glamour,  his 
esthetic  relaxations  among  these  children  of  the 
only  art  that  appealed  to  his  common  sense.  In 
awe  of  them  for  the  very  little  that  they  were 
which  he  was  not,  he  stood  their  rebuffs  and 
fathered  their  follies,  his  eyes  wide  open.  And 
then  there  was  Rose! 

"Rose  ought  to  marry." 

Like  a  bombshell  the  words  had  burst  into 
Stiles's  meditation.  Baumgarten  had  spoken 
them,  but  so  perfectly  had  they  timed  themselves 
with  Stiles's  own  reverie  that  he  actually  wondered 
whether  he  had  been  thinking  aloud.  He  had  not, 
however.  Baumgarten  had  merely  received  the 
same  suggestion  that  he  had  received  himself  from 
the  silhouette  of  the  two  figures  now  disappearing 
at  the  turn  of  the  road. 

"Eksberger?"  asked  Stiles. 

Baumgarten  had  not  meant  that  necessarily. 
"She  ought  to  marry  somebody,"  he  said.  He  did 
not  say  why,  but  Stiles  found  the  lead  an  attractive 
one. 

"Miss  Fuller,  I  imagine,  has  made  a  very  great 
success." 

He  expected  to  this,  at  least,  immediate  and 


CRATER'S    GOLD  189 

enthusiastic  acquiescence,  but  even  the  woman  he 
loved  this  unaccountable  man  saw  with  that 
strange  impersonal  clearness  with  which  he  saw 
all  that  romantic  profession  by  which,  nevertheless, 
he  allowed  himself  to  be  judged  a  fool. 

"Rose  is  funny,"  he  said.  "She's  a  better  girl 
than  she  is  an  actress." 

The  surprised  expression  of  Stiles's  face  led  him 
into  an  explanation  still  more  blunt,  but,  curi- 
ously, not  more  offensive. 

"Rose,"  he  explained,  "is  what  you  might  call 
a  work-horse." 

The  term  seemed  ludicrous  applied  to  the  slender 
figure  coming  in  sight  again  at  the  turn  of  the 
road,  and  even  Baumgarten  saw  that  it  needed 
revision. 

"Oh,  Rose  is  good,"  he  added,  hastily.  "She's 
very  good.  She  knows  how  to  dance  and  she's  got 
a  beautiful  voice." 

He  hesitated  to  find  the  exact  words  to  convey 
his  meaning,  but  even  those  words  had  aroused 
for  Stiles  a  rare  and  puzzling  vision.  For  a  second 
there  flashed  before  his  eyes  the  picture  of  Rose  in 
a  flopping  hat,  a  basket  of  flowers  on  her  arm,  with 
high-laced  ankles  and  toes  twinkling  mischievously 
to  the  notes  coming  over  the  footlights.  For  a 
man  who  knew  as  little  of  comic  opera  as  he  did, 
the  picture  was  a  marvelously  accurate  one.  It 
had  the  clearness  of  inspiration,  but  it  lasted  only 
a  second.  He  could  not  recall  it.  He  had  tried  it 
before,  but  he  could  not  connect  that  quiet,  almost 


190  CRATER'S    GOLD 

morose  girl  who  had  sat  in  his  study  with  any  such 
picture  as  that. 

"Charlie  knows  it,"  said  Baumgarten.  "I 
guess  Rose  knows  it  herself.  Rose  is  good  for 
three  hundred  a  week  any  day.  She's  a  star,  all 
right,  but  she's  just  so  much  of  a  star  and  she'll 
never  be  any  more.  Do  you  know  what  I  mean  ?" 
Stiles  did  know  approximately,  but  he  wanted 
to  hear  more,  and  Baumgarten  was  willing  to  tell 
him. 

"There's  nobody  in  the  profession  has  a  better 
name  than  Rose  Fuller;  but  in  the  profession, 
mind  you.  The  public's  another  kettle  of  fish. 
When  they  get  up  a  show  they  try  one  girl  after 
another,  and  she  makes  a  muff  of  it,  and  then, 
when  they've  got  to  the  end  of  their  rope,  they 
call  in  Rose  and  she  carries  it  off.  She  does  it 
because  she  knows  her  business  down  to  the  final 
flip.  That's  just  what  happened  in  'The  Daisy 
Chain.'  That's  just  what  happened  in  'The  Girl 
from  Madrid.'  She's  saved  more  shows  than  you 
ever  saw,  but  there  you  are!  Then  along  comes 
some  chicken  with  baby  eyes  and  a  solid  ivory 
dome  who  can't  dance  and  can't  sing  and  pulls 
down  five  hundred  a  week  and  fame.  When  the 
public  goes  to  one  show  they  say  that  they've 
seen  Elsie  Fair  in  'The  Dancing  Girl,'  and  when 
they  go  to  another  they  say  that  they've  seen 
'The  Girl  from  Madrid'  and  that  Rose  Fuller 
was  in  it.  Do  you  get  me  now?" 

Stiles  nodded.     It  came  to  him  now  that  there 


CRATER'S   GOLD  191 

had  been  more  than  mere  deprecation  when  Rose 
had  spoken  impatiently  of  her  own  career.  He  had 
even  been  unwittingly  cruel  when  it  had  been  forced 
out  of  him  that  he  knew  "The  Daisy  Chain," 
but  knew  not  her.  How  depressingly  often  she 
must  have  had  just  such  a  conversation  before. 
Like  all  persons  who  have  not  practised  them,  he 
had  assumed  that  to  earn  a  good  living  in  the  arts 
is  the  same  as  success.  A  sudden  recollection  of 
Baumgarten's  own  quixotic  offer  came  to  him, 
and  in  the  same  wave  of  sentimentality  which 
must  have  prompted  Baumgarten  himself  at  the 
time  he  said: 

"It's  too  bad.  Never  mind.  If  my  copper- 
mine  only  pans  out,  we'll  buy  her  a  theater  of  her 
own." 

It  was  a  very  foolish  thing  to  say,  knowing,  as 
he  did  now,  the  kind  of  man  that  Baumgarten 
really  was.  The  latter  flushed.  He  stared  down 
at  the  ground,  then  looked  at  Stiles  with  little, 
appraising  eyes. 

"Mr.  Stiles,"  he  said,  "you've  got  something 
that's  worth  a  damn  sight  more  than  that  copper- 
mine." 

Stiles  searched  his  face,  but  Baumgarten  never 
flinched.  His  gaze  was  unrelenting,  but  it  was 
not  unfriendly.  A  suggestion  of  a  smile  was  even 
creeping  into  his  eyes. 

"Oh,  don't  think  I'm  going  to  tell  you,"  he 
said,  "if  you  don't  know  it  yourself.  Hello,  Ike! 
where  did  you  come  from?" 


192  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Stiles  turned  and  saw  the  forgotten  chauffeur 
running  in  great  excitement  over  the  lawn.  Re- 
gardless of  ceremony,  regardless  of  explanation, 
he  waved  his  arm  and  commanded : 

"Hurry  up!  You  oughtn't  to  miss  it.  It's 
better  than  a  dog  fight!  I  bet  there's  a  hundred 
men  and  five  hundred  kids  got  ahold  of  that 
rope." 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  best  account  of  the  rescue  of  the  colossus 
was  undoubtedly  that  given  by  the  chauffeur 
some  weeks  later.  His  audience-room  was  over  a 
Sixth  Avenue  garage,  his  audience  grouped  around 
a  deal  table  on  which  cards  were  dealt.  From  time 
to  time  there  clinked  sundry  coins. 

'"Air  ye  ready?'  says  the  old  Wheat  with  the 
whiskers,  the  one  who  was  bossing  the  job. 

"'Let  'er  rip!'  says  the  lad  in  the  hole,  the  one 
with  the  rubber  boots. 

'"Hey,  there!  Wait  a  minute!'  says  I.  'The 
way  you've  got  that  rope  tied  you'll  pull  out 
every  water  connection  she's  got.'  The  big  boob 
had  tied  it  around  the  radiator.  'Here,  let  me 
show  you,'  I  says,  and  I  has  them  tie  it  around 
the  front  ex.  'All  right!  Go  to  it!'  I  says.. 

"'Let  her  rip!'  says  the  lad  in  the  hole. 

"'Heave  away!'  says  the  old  Wheat,  and  with 
that  the  men  starts  pulling  and  the  kids  starts 
yelling  and  the  dogs  starts  barking,  and  galoop! 
out  she  comes  like  a  bucket  of  glue.  If  I  hadn't 
stopped  'em  they'd  have  pulled  it  clear  into 
Dutchess  County.  Who's  dealing?  Me?" 


i94  CRATER'S   GOLD 

The  chauffeur,  indeed,  had  been  so  elated  about 
the  professional  aspects  of  the  affair  that  he  failed 
to  notice  how  strangely  little  excitement  was 
shown  by  his  master.  Stiles  noticed  it,  however, 
and  presumably  Baumgarten  did.  Eksberger,  in 
fact,  was  almost  indifferent.  He  did  not  arrive 
until  after  the  car  was  well  up  on  terra  firma,  and 
then  he  hardly  gave  it  a  glance. 

"Have  it  towed  to  the  garage  and  cleaned  up 
as  much  as  you  can,"  he  commanded,  listlessly. 
"We  may  have  to  ship  it  to  town." 

The  happy  villagers,  gathered  in  groups,  were 
chilled  by  this  slight  applause  for  their  Herculean 
labors,  but  solaced  themselves  by  bossing  the  men 
who  were  tying  the  car  to  the  back  of  a  four- 
horse  wagon. 

"Tie  it  to  the  ex,"  they  cried.  "Do  you  want 
to  pull  out  every  water  connection  she's  got?" 

Alone  of  the  forty  or  fifty  who  actually  did  take 
part,  the  judge,  Baumgarten,  and  Stiles  had  the 
curiosity  to  look  in  the  vacated  hole.  Sluggish 
yellow  water  filled  it  to  a  depth  of  about  two  feet 
as  the  man  with  the  rubber  boots  could  have  testi- 
fied, but  gave  no  signs  of  rising. 

"I  had  them  shut  the  gate  at  the  pond,  to  make 
sure,"  explained  the  judge,  "but  I  don't  think  it 
would  have  filled  up  much,  anyway.  The  water 
goes  somewhere  else.  It  probably  fills  the  whole 
mine  before  it  begins  running  top  the  ground 
again." 

Stiles  -looked  at  the  hole  musingly,  and  Baum- 


CRATER'S   GOLD 

garten  with  an  alert  and  scholarly  interest,  but 
neither  had  any  comments.  Baumgarten,  safe 
to  say,  was  now  in  possession  of  the  whole  story. 

"Funny,"  remarked  the  judge.  "If  I'd  wanted 
a  man  to  cut  cord-wood  or  pick  up  apples,  they 
wouldn't  be  one  in  town  that  wa'n't  too  busy, 
but  here  we've  had  fifty  men  sweating  like  horses 
right  in  the  middle  of  haying." 

Stiles  had  already  had  on  his  conscience  Eks- 
berger's  too  scanty  thanks.  "We  appreciate  it," 
he  said.  "In  the  country,  people  are  always 
ready  to  play  the  Samaritan." 

The  judge's  eyes  rather  twinkled.  "I  wa'n't 
thinking  so  much  about  the  Samaritan  part. 
Have  you  ever  seen  city  folks  too  busy  to  stop 
to  look  at  a  street  fight? 

"There's  no  hurry,"  he  added,  a  minute  later, 
"but  I  promised  Bill  Connor  half  a  day's  time  for 
doing  the  digging." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

FROM  appearances,  one  might  have  supposed 
that  Rose  and  Eksberger  had  hardly  been  in- 
terrupted when  Baumgarten  and  Stiles  made 
their  way  up  the  hill.  They  were  standing  in  the 
pathway  before  the  house  in  much  the  same  atti- 
tudes in  which  they  had  walked  up  the  road. 
The  only  difference  was  that  they  were  no  longer 
talking.  One  gathered  that  what  they  had  had 
to  decide  had  been  decided — finally,  completely, 
once  and  for  all.  Rose  was  as  calm  and  as  non- 
chalant as  she  had  been  on  her  first  appearance. 
Eksberger  was  not.  He  had  had  a  bad  half- 
hour.  He  showed  it,  even  to  his  hair.  They 
were  merely  waiting,  apparently,  for  the  return  of 
their  host  and  his  other  guest. 

Rose  set  matters  in  motion  at  once.    With  her 
hand  held  out,  she  walked  up  to  Stiles. 

' '  Good-by,  Mr.  Stiles.  You've  been  very  good. ' ' 
Stiles  made  no  motion  to  take  her  hand,  not  so 
much  from  surprise  as  from  a  deliberate  refusal 
to  let  her  go,  but  she  still  held  it  out  before  her. 
Her  mouth  was  drawn  into  that  firm,  straight 
line  which  a  woman  commands  when  she  means 


CRATER'S   GOLD  197 

to  do  something  unpleasant,  yet,  in  doing  it, 
means  to  set  an  example  of  perfect  good  nature 
and  self-control.  Standing  over  her  there,  in  her 
efforts,  Stiles  had  never  realized  before  how  much 
taller  and  how  much  older  he  was  than  she. 
With  that  sudden  magnetic  attraction  which  al- 
ways comes  at  grotesque  moments,  he  had  an 
impulse  to  put  his  hands  on  her  shoulders.  He 
almost  feared  that  she  read  his  impulse.  The 
tableau  seemed  to  him  to  occupy  minutes.  It 
actually  lasted  for  seconds  only. 

"But  you  can't,"  he  exclaimed.  "How  are  you 
going  to  go?" 

"There's  a  train  at  six-one." 

"From  Felsted." 

"I  suppose  I  can  hire  a  car." 

The  tableau  at  last  was  becoming  conspicuous, 
and  previous  arrangements  had  evidently  been 
made  to  keep  it  from  becoming  just  that. 

"Stuffy,  come  here.  I  want  to  talk  to  you." 
Eksberger,  in  tone  at  least,  was  quite  his  old  self, 
and,  with  a  smile,  Baumgarten  became  his  old 
self;  he  obeyed.  As  they  walked  away,  Rose 
dropped  her  hand,  but  she  and  Stiles  continued  to 
look  at  each  other  almost  defiantly.  At  the  faint- 
est sign  of  relaxing  only  did  Stiles  dare  speak. 

"My  dear  Miss  Fuller,"  he  said,  "what  is  this?" 

She  chose  deliberately  to  misunderstand  him. 
"I  know  I  should  not  have  come  back,"  she  said, 
but  Stiles  had  an  instinct  that  made  up  for  lack  of 
experience. 


i98  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"You  mean  that  you  should  not  have  gone 
away." 

"Very  pretty,"  she  answered,  but  Stiles  refused 
to  be  snubbed.  He  stood  looking  at  her  a  moment 
more,  and  then  he  turned  toward  the  house. 

"At  any  rate,"  he  suggested,  "it  won't  take  you 
two  hours  to  get  to  Felsted.  For  a  soul  in  torment, 
I  do  not  recommend  the  view  from  the  Felsted 
station." 

She  was  not,  perhaps,  wholly  eager  to  combat 
the  statement,  and  she  turned  to  walk  beside  him. 
They  did  not,  however,  continue  toward  the  piazza. 
Those  are  not  moments  in  which  one  sits  calmly 
in  chairs.  Not  so  much  by  attraction,  but  because 
there  was  nowhere  else  to  go,  they  strolled  toward 
the  old  cellar.  They  reached  it  and  Rose  looked  in 
with  complete  indifference.  The  hole,  half  covered 
with  debris,  was  fully  visible  now  under  the  wall 
on  which  they  were  standing. 

"It's  not  very  terrible  by  daylight,"  suggested 
Stiles. 

Rose  did  not  reply. 

"Will  you  sit  down?"  asked  Stiles,  and,  no 
reason  offering  to  the  contrary,  Rose  did  sit  down 
on  the  turf  of  the  rampart,  while  Stiles  sat  beside 
her.  Eksberger  and  Baumgarten,  apparently, 
were  not  so  particular  about  their  setting.  Seeing 
that  the  others  did  not  intend  to  use  them,  they 
had  promptly  taken  possession  of  the  piazza 
chairs.  Baumgarten  was  talking  now,  rather  laying 
down  the  law,  and  Eksberger,  one  foot  on  the 


CRATER'S   GOLD  199 

rail,  was  looking  disconsolately  out  at  the  view. 
Rose  caught  sight  of  the  other  couple  and 
laughed. 

"You'd  think  we'd  been  fighting." 

The  slightest  wedge  had  been  all  that  Stiles  had 
been  waiting  for. 

"And  have  you?"  he  asked. 

For  answer,  Rose  shrugged.  It  was  not  the 
easiest  thing  to  talk  to  answers  like  that,  but 
Stiles  knew  that  time  was  fleeting. 

"Will  you  please  tell  me?"  he  begged.  "Was  it 
anything  I  did — or  said — or  didn't  say?" 

At  last  Rose  turned  to  him  squarely.  "Why  do 
you  pretend  to  be  such  a  fool?  Because  you're 
not,  really." 

No,  he  was  not,  but  the  admission  involved 
further  silence.  Because  of  that  silence,  probably, 
Rose  relented. 

"Mr.  Stiles,  be  sensible.  You  can  see  the  posi- 
tion that  I  have  been  in.  Perhaps  you  thought 
I  didn't  care.  You  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  I 
ought  not  to  have  stayed  here.  I  ought  to  have 
gone  home  last  night,  if  I  had  to  walk." 

She  added,  faintly,  "It  didn't  seem  so  queer 
then." 

"Why  does  it  seem  queer  now?" 

He  did  not  mean  his  question  to  be  cruel,  and 
she  did  not  take  it  as  such.  She  looked  down  at  the 
turf,  and  then  she  said,  musingly,  "I  saw  Stuffy 
Baumgarten  at  the  station." 

Stiles  knew  from  the  tone  of  her  voice  that  at 

14 


200  CRATER'S   GOLD 

last  he  could  adopt  with  success  her  own  policy  of 
silence,  and  in  time,  sure  enough,  she  went  on, 
with  effort  and  f ragmen tarily :  "He  said  he  was 
coming  here.  Even  then  I  didn't  think  of  it  much. 
Just  before  the  train  came  in  I  got  scared.  Those 
two  together.  I  knew  he  would  make  an  awful 
mess  of  it  all." 

Her  voice  had  not  changed,  but  Stiles  knew  that 
"he"  meant  Eksberger,  not  Baumgarten.  She 
went  on,  as  before,  "I  don't  know  that  I  helped 
matters  any." 

"You  don't  mean  to  say,"  asked  Stiles,  "that 
Baumgarten  is  going  to  say  anything  about  this — 
this  adventure." 

"Oh  no,  he  won't  now.  That's  all  right.  I 
made  Charlie  ask  him  not  to,  but  it  wasn't  just 
that."  By  the  way  that  she  prefaced  the  next 
remark  Stiles  foresaw  its  nature.  "They're  good 
as  gold,  both  of  them,  but  they  don't  always  see 
things  the  way — " 

"The  way  that  you  do?" 

"That  was  not  what  I  was  going  to  say,"  said 
Rose,  quietly. 

She  sat  in  silence  again,  trying  to  find  words  to 
tell  him  what  seemed  so  clear  to  her  and  ought  to 
be  so  clear  to  him — and  probably  was,  except  for 
his  obstinacy. 

"It's  that  Mrs.  What's -her -name?  Queen 
Victoria." 

"Mrs.  Pullar?"  asked  Stiles.  "Look  here,"  he 
went  on.  "If  that  old  duchess  is  bothering  you, 


CRATER'S    GOLD  201 

you  just  get  her  right  out  of  your  head  once  and 
for  all." 

Rose  smiled.  "I  didn't  mean  her  so  much, 
herself.  It's —  You  know  what  I  mean.  Charlie 
is  the  best  fellow  in  the  world,  and  Stuffy  is  all 
right  in  his  way,  but — " 

Stiles  helped  her.  "You  thought  it  was  time  to 
call  off  your  dogs?" 

"That's  about  the  size  of  it." 

"Look  here,"  Stiles  commanded  again;  then  he 
stopped  abruptly.  He  was  silent  so  long  that 
Rose  turned  in  question.  She  found  him  staring 
at  her,  and  her  own  expression  changed  at  the 
look  she  saw  on  his  face. 

"What's  the  matter?"  she  asked,  in  alarm. 

Still  Stiles  did  not  reply  for  minutes.  When  he 
did  it  was  in  a  very  low  voice.  "I  was  trying  to 
make  up  my  mind  whether  I  dared  to  ask  you  to 
marry  me." 

She  seemed  relieved  that  it  was  only  that. 

"We  can  talk  about  that  later,"  she  said.  Her 
eyes  twinkled.  ' '  Once  is  enough  for  one  afternoon. ' ' 

Stiles  nodded  toward  Eksberger. 

"Again?"  he  asked. 

"Still,"  corrected  Rose.  "What  were  you  going 
to  say?" 

"I'd  rather  know  what  you  said,"  suggested 
Stiles. 

"I  said  'No,"  she  answered,  emphatically, 
"what  I've  always  said  and  always  will  say." 

"Good  gracious!     I  didn't  mean  that,"  inter- 


202  CRATER'S    GOLD 

jected  Stiles,  hastily.  "I  meant  what  did  you  say 
when  you  tried  to  call  off  your  dog?" 

On  any  such  complex  subject  as  this,  however, 
Rose  was  dumb.  After  waiting  a  minute,  Stiles 
tried  to  help  her  again. 

"I'm  going  to  talk  plainly,"  he  began.  "Have 
you  got  it  into  your  head,  in  view  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria and  Pullar  and  all  that  rarefied  bunch,  that 
Eksberger  and  Baumgarten — " 

"Go  on,  say  it,"  interrupted  Rose. 

"Say  what?" 

"Eksberger  and  Baumgarten  and  I — " 

"I  won't  say  it,"  replied  Stiles,  flatly. 

"You  might  as  well.    It's  true." 

"That  Eksberger  and  Baumgarten — "  insisted 
Stiles. 

"Are  about  as  welcome  in  this  town,"  finished 
Rose,  curtly,  "as  smallpox,  and  neither  of  them 
has  brains  enough  to  see  it.  I  have." 

She  left  him  rather  flat,  but  Stiles  had  courage 
to  ask,  "Did  you  tell  him  that?  Eksberger?" 

Rose  looked  at  the  figure  on  the  piazza,  then 
held  out  her  hands  helplessly.  "Don't  you  know 
him  by  this  time?"  she  asked.  "Of  course  I 
couldn't  tell  him  in  so  many  words.  I  don't  think 
he  would  have  believed  it,  even  if  I  had. 

"Of  course,  Charlie  is  an  awfully  nice  fellow — " 
she  added. 

"I  understand  that,"  interrupted  Stiles,  quickly. 
He  paused  thoughtfully,  and  then  asked,  "What 
did  he  say?" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  203 

Rose  smiled.  "He  said,  'I  get  you,  Steve,  I  get 
you,'  and  he  didn't  get  me  at  all.  He  spent  the 
rest  of  the  time  asking  me  to  marry  him,"  she 
added,  ruefully.  "You  both  seem  to  think  that 
would  help  matters." 

The  lines  around  Stiles 's  mouth  grew  deeper  as 
they  had  the  evening  before  when  they  had  talked 
in  front  of  the  fireplace.  "Do  you  mind  if  I 
smoke?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,  very  much,"  replied  Rose,  pettishly. 

Stiles  lit  his  pipe  nevertheless.  "I  want  to  tell 
you  something,"  he  said.  "You  mentioned  small- 
pox. The  smallpox  those  people  are  afraid  of  is 
right  here  beside  you." 

She  gave  him  the  tiny  lift  of  the  eyebrows  that 
allowed  him  to  go  on,  and  he  told  her  the  story  of 
the  real  Crater  ghost,  the  story  that  Pullar  had 
told  him  that  morning.  He  did  not  spare  himself 
or  his  family.  In  fact,  being  Stiles,  he  made  it 
rather  worse  than  it  need  have  been.  She  had  seen 
just  enough  the  evening  before  to  know  that  he 
spoke  the  truth,  and  she  listened  quietly,  never 
taking  her  eyes  from  the  ground.  She  did  not  even 
lift  them  when  Stiles  had  finished. 

"A  pretty  story,"  he  added,  bitterly,  to  draw 
some  response. 

"It  is  not  very  nice,"  she  answered,  candidly. 
Still  she  did  not  look  up,  and  Stiles  insisted: 

"So  you  see  who  is  really  not  wanted." 

She  did  not  answer,  and  he  asked  her  again, 
"Don't  you?" 


204  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"It's  not  the  same  thing,"  she  said,  curtly, 
and,  as  usual,  she  spoke  the  truth.  "What  are 
you  going  to  do?"  she  asked,  at  last. 

"I'm  going  to  do  the  same  thing  that  you  did," 
he  answered.  "I'm  going  to  clear  out." 

"Then  you  do  admit  that  I  ought  to  have  gone?" 
she  asked,  quickly. 

"I  admit  that  both  of  us  are  more  or  less 
sensitive,"  replied  Stiles,  "and  that  neither  one 
of  us,  guilty  or  not  guilty,  has  any  desire  to  dis- 
turb the  peace  and  calm  of  profound  and  ordered 
society.  Do  you  happen  to  recall  that  I  just 
asked  you  to  marry  me?" 

"You  didn't  ask  me.  You  said  that  you  were 
trying  to  make  up  your  mind  whether  you  dared 
to  or  not." 

"Very  well,  I  dare.     Will  you?" 

Rose  laughed.  "Mr.  Stiles,  people  don't  marry 
that  way." 

"Neither  do  people  lose  automobiles  in  the 
ground;  neither  do  people  find  copper-mines  in 
their  back  yards;  neither  do  people  give  house 
parties  to  leading  ladies  whom  they  have  never 
seen  before." 

"And  don't  know  when  they  do  see  them,"  con- 
cluded Rose.  "Mr.  Stiles,  why  do  you  want  to 
marry  me?" 

"People  do,  don't  they?" 

"Sometimes,"  she  admitted.  "Would  we  have 
to  live  here  with  the  ghosts?  Your  family  rather 
goes  in  for  cutting  brides'  throats,  doesn't  it?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  205 

"Strangling,  strangling,"  corrected  Stiles. 
"Don't  make  us  any  messier  than  we  are."  But 
as  he  spoke  Rose  clutched  his  arm  in  a  grip  of 
terror. 

"What's  that?" 

In  her  clutch  Stiles  became  rigid.  They  sat  in 
silence,  and  then,  from  the  cellar  behind  them, 
crawling  up  their  very  spines,  came  a  deep,  mut- 
tering voice,  "Madre,  Madre,  Madre!" 

Even  in  daylight  it  was  terrifying.  Even  Stiles 
felt  his  hands  grow  cold.  Then  he  laughed,  or 
tried  to  laugh. 

"It's  Mrs.  Fields,  but  how  the—" 

He  had  looked  up  and  seen  Mrs.  Fields  coming 
out  of  the  house,  the  perpetual  basket  of  clothes 
under  her  arm.  Rose,  in  terror,  was  still  clutch- 
ing his  arm  and  drawing  away.  He  looked  back 
at  the  cellar,  but  heard  nothing  more. 

"I  think  we'd  better  go,"  whispered  Rose,  and 
Stiles  allowed  her  to  draw  him  across  the  lawn 
to  the  house. 

"Well,  friends  and  fellow-countrymen,"  ex- 
claimed Baumgarten,  in  a  loud  voice  as  he  saw 
them  coming,  but  Stiles  held  up  his  hand. 

"Sst!"  he  cautioned,  and  then  beckoned. 

Baumgarten  looked  at  Eksberger  and  Eksberger 
looked  at  Baumgarten.  At  last  the  former  got 
up  and  the  latter  followed.  In  obedience  to  Stiles's 
gestured  cautions,  they  tiptoed  across  the  lawn, 
while  Rose  rather  skirted  the  porch  for  protection. 

At  the  rampart,  Stiles  held  his  finger  to  his  lips 


206  CRATER'S    GOLD 

in  a  final  caution,  and  the  three  looked  down  at 
the  hole.  For  a  minute  they  heard  nothing,  then 
came  a  deep,  mumbling  voice,  "Mad',  Madre!" 

"Jove!"  whispered  Eksberger,  and  Stiles  cau- 
tioned him  again.  Motioning  the  others  to  stay 
where  they  were,  he  hastened  across  the  lawn. 

"Mrs.  Fields,"  he  said,  "I  want  you  to  come 
here  a  moment." 

Mrs.  Fields  calmly  finished  hanging  a  towel 
before  she  gave  any  sign  that  she  heard,  then  she 
followed  him  to  the  rampart. 

"Mrs.  Fields,"  said  Stiles,  firmly,  and  speaking 
very  close  to  her  ear,  "do  you  speak  Spanish?" 

He  pointed  into  the  cellar,  and  at  that  moment 
came  two  deep  voices  at  once.  All  three  of  the 
men  looked  at  her  and  she  looked  at  the  hole. 

"Maybe  I  do  and  maybe  I  don't,"  she  replied, 
"but  I  shouldn't  say  that  was  Spanish." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

"TF  you  can  keep  butter  down  there,  why  can't 

*  you  keep  cows?" 

Mrs.  Fields  gazed  fiercely  at  the  group  standing 
around  the  entrance  to  the  old  mine  shaft  and 
demanded  a  flaw  in  her  logic. 

"The  container  for  the  thing  contained,"  mur- 
mured Stiles,  softly.  "What  is  true  of  the  part  is 
true  of  the  whole."  But  Mrs.  Fields  did  not  hear 
him,  and  the  others  were  too  intent  on  amazing 
facts  to  have  time  for  abstract  excursions. 

"Cows,"  exclaimed  Eksberger,  looking  down  at 
the  hole.  "Are  there  cows  down  there?"  A  look 
of  incredulity  spread  over  his  face.  "Say,"  he 
said,  "don't  try  to  tell  me  that  Bugby's  steers 
are  still  there." 

"I  don't  try  to  tell  you  anything,"  retorted  the 
housekeeper,  with  a  fierceness  which  was  almost 
witchlike,  "except  that  no  Bugby  or  anybody  else 
had  a  claim  to  a  hoof  or  a  horn." 

"For  Heaven's  sake,  how  many  are  there?"  de- 
manded Eksberger. 

"Four,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields,  her  lip  trembling, 
"and  a  three  days'  calf.  It  was  him  that  was 


208 

talking  Spanish,"  she  had  to  add,  however,  with 
a  twitch  in  the  lines  of  her  face  which  only  made 
her  expression  the  grimmer.  "The  quilt  I'm  will- 
ing to  pay  for." 

"They  are  your  cows,  then?"  asked  Stiles. 

Mrs.  Fields  looked  at  him  as  if  the  issue  had 
come  to  a  head  at  last.  "They  most  certainly  air 
my  cows.  Did  the  judge  want  to  think  I  was  work- 
ing for  nothing  the  last  four  years?" 

Eksberger  and  Baumgarten  looked  at  Stiles  as 
if  this  were  a  matter  which  he  understood;  and 
he  did,  to  a  certain  extent.  His  talk  with  Pullar 
had  prepared  him  for  developments  such  as  this, 
but  it  was  hardly  a  matter  that  he  wished  to  re- 
open. He  stood  gazing  down  at  the  hole  in  the 
cellar,  saying  nothing,  but  Mrs.  Fields  was  deter- 
mined to  have  it  out  on  the  spot. 

"I  hain't  any  papers,  but  I'm  willing  to  go  to 
law  on  it  before  I'll  give  them  cows  up.  The  calf 
is  mine,  anyway." 

' '  Nobody  is  going  to  take  your  cows  away  from 
you,  Mrs.  Fields,"  said  Stiles,  quietly.  "How 
long  have  you  had  them  down  there?" 

"When  did  you  come?"  parried  his  housekeeper. 

"Three  weeks  ago,"  answered  Stiles. 

"Well,  then,  they've  been  there  two  weeks." 
She  still  looked  at  him  with  lingering  suspicion, 
but  in  her  queer,  crooked  old  mind  honesty  fought 
with  defiance.  "You  come  on  a  Tuesday  and  they 
went  in  there  the  following  Saturday.  I  had  'em 
up  in  the  woods  for  a  month  while  the  judge  was 


CRATER'S   GOLD  209 

counting  the  towels  and  winding  up  the  estate, 
but  after  you  come  it  was  too  far  to  go  up  there 
nights." 

Stiles  looked  at  the  fierce  little  figure  and  there 
came  to  his  mind  the  pitiful  picture  of  that  frail 
old  woman  stealing  out  at  night  and  trudging  her 
bitter,  determined  way  through  the  dark,  silent 
woods  to  care  for  and  shield  her  one  little  property. 
Her  mountaineer  ancestors,  guarding  in  secret 
their  flocks  and  herds  from  Saracen  bands,  could 
have  done  no  better. 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  suddenly,  Eksberger  or 
no  Eksberger,  Baumgarten  or  no  Baumgarten. 
"Did  my  uncle  leave  you  anything  in  his  will?" 

"Your  uncle  never  made  no  will.  You  ought  to 
know  that." 

Stiles  hung  his  head,  but,  like  Mrs.  Fields,  he 
wanted  to  have  it  out  now. 

"And  for  four  years  he  never  paid  you  a  cent?" 

For  the  first  time  since  he  had  known  her  Mrs. 
Fields  visibly  softened.  "He  was  a  man  accus- 
tomed to  using  his  money — what  money  the  judge 
let  him  have." 

"So  you  took  the  cows?" 

"The  first  year  he  told  me  to  call  the  Clark  cow 
my  own,  and  after  that  they  wasn't  much  said 
about  it.  They  was  another  spotted  heifer  that 
was  still  his,  but  that  died  last  fall  of  being 
bloated." 

"But  what  I  don't  get,"  broke  in  Eksberger, 
"is  how  you  ever  got  them  down  there." 


210  CRATER'S   GOLD 

He  spoke  loud  enough  so  that  Mrs.  Fields  heard 
him  and  she  turned  to  him  with  a  snort.  "They's 
plenty  o'  ways  if  you  only  know  them." 

Stiles  hastened  to  intervene 

"Would  you  be  willing  to  show  us?"  he  asked, 
gently,  but,  while  the  forced  strain  was  telling  on 
Mrs.  Fields,  she  still  managed  to  summon  one 
last  show  of  fierceness. 

"That's  understood,  then,  that  the  cows  is 
mine?" 

"Full  and  free,  without  let  or  restraint,  without 
secret  covenant  or  implied  reservation,"  Stiles 
answered,  with  a  smile,  "and  before  two  witnesses 
— three,"  he  amended,  as  Rose,  seeing  that  none 
of  her  companions  had  been  eaten  alive,  slowly 
conquered  her  fear  and  came  across  the  lawn. 

"And  the  calf,  too?"  insisted  Mrs.  Fields. 

"The  calf,  too." 

"Come  on,  then." 

Rose  met  the  group  returning  to  the  main 
house  under  the  trudging  lead  of  the  little  old 
woman,  and  her  face  implied  a  question. 

"Fall  in,"  called  Eksberger,  gaily.  "We're 
going  to  explore  the  mine." 

As  if  she  had  hardly  heard  him,  Rose  looked 
,at  Stiles  and  he  repeated  Eksberger's  exact  words. 
"There's  no  danger  at  all,"  he  added,  and,  timor- 
ously, Rose  walked  along  with  them. 

In  her  kitchen  Mrs.  Fields  lit  a  lantern  and  led 
the  way  through  the  hall  to  the  cellar  stairs, 
where  she  turned. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  211 

"This  ain't  the  way  I  got  them  in,"  she  ex- 
plained, laconically. 

She  led  her  explorers  down  the  rickety  stairway, 
and,  turning  at  the  bottom,  held  up  the  lantern 
while  they  followed,  Rose  last  of  all.  As  they  left 
the  main  floor  they  were  met  by  a  smell  of  mold 
and  their  faces  were  brushed  by  cobwebs.  Rose 
shivered,  but  kept  on  bravely. 

The  cellar  floor  was  of  dirt  and  wavelike  in  its 
levels,  but  sooty  windows  helped  out  the  lantern, 
and  Stiles  with  his  party  looked  around.  There 
was  little  to  see  except  the  base  of  the  immense 
chimney  which  filled  a  considerable  part  of  the 
cellar.  Along  the  walls  were  innumerable  crocks 
and  earthen  jars  of  all  sorts  and  shapes,  and  a 
rusted  machine  of  which  not  even  Mrs.  Fields  knew 
the  purpose.  "I  got  them  in  there,"  she  said, 
and  pointed  to  the  closed  door  of  the  hatchway. 

Indeed,  relieved  of  her  secret,  Mrs.  Fields  was 
actually  garrulous.  A  brisk  and  almost  hysterical 
amiability  had  come  over  the  dour  and  defiant 
woman  who  had  waited  grudgingly  on  Stiles  for 
three  weeks.  Was  it  relief?  he  wondered.  Had 
the  guilty  knowledge  of  those  four  pitiful  cows 
hidden  under  their  feet  been  gnawing  at  her  vitals 
ever  since  his  arrival,  furnishing  her  with  the 
source  of  a  mental  turmoil  as  great,  in  its  homely 
way,  as  Lady  Macbeth's,  transforming  her  from 
a  harmless,  gossipy  woman-of -all-work  to  a  hostile 
old  crone?  It  could  be.  Four  cows  to  her  meant 
the  prop  of  old  age. 


2i2  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Behind  the  chimney,  the  cellar  continued  under 
an  ell,  a  space  without  windows,  and  here  in  the 
floor  the  lantern  showed  a  slanting  passage  lead- 
ing into  a  gaping  hole.  Beside  it  were  big  piles  of 
dirt. 

"Why,  it's  fresh!"  exclaimed  Baumgarten, 
leaning  down  and  examining  it  in  the  light  of  the 
lantern. 

Mrs.  Fields  stood  still  and  said  nothing  while 
Baumgarten  took  up  a  shovel. 

"Some  one's  been  digging  here." 

The  old  woman  smiled,  a  thing  Stiles  had  never 
before  seen  her  do.  "A  cow's  a  pretty  big  ani- 
mal," she  replied. 

Baumgarten  straightened  himself  and  looked  at 
her,  his  hands  on  his  hips.  It  was  a  mannerism  of 
his,  one  of  his  detestable  mannerisms.  One  would 
never  have  believed  that  it  could  be  noble,  but 
it  was  at  that  moment.  It  was  an  attitude  of 
utter  respect.  At  the  sight  of  those  huge  piles 
of  dirt  and  the  sight  of  that  little  old  woman, 
bent  and  frail  in  the  light  of  the  lantern,  the 
pompous,  well-fed  New-Yorker  had  seen,  in  its 
every  atom  of  pathos,  the  picture  that  Stiles  had 
seen  the  moment  before. 

"Well,  my  gosh!"  he  said,  slowly,  and  of  that, 
too,  every  syllable  was  laden  with  pure  respect. 

Before  them  the  blackness  of  the  gaping  hole 
apparently  led  into  the  base  of  the  wall. 

"But  some  hole  was  there?"  suggested  Stiles. 

"Oh  yes,  there's  always  be'n  a  hole,"  replied 


CRATER'S   GOLD  213 

Mrs.  Fields  with  the  same  willingness,  "one  that 
you  could  go  in  with  stooping.  The  frost  broke  it 
in,  I  guess,  or  perhaps  boys  did  it  long  ago.  We 
used  to  keep  butter  to  cool  there  and  your  uncle 
used  it  for — for  things  he  wanted — but  it  was  too 
small  for  a  cow." 

"And  you  shoveled  it  out?"  said  Stiles. 

"The  wall  was  broke  anyway,"  said  Mrs.  Fields, 
fearfully. 

She  turned  the  wick  of  the  lantern  higher  and 
led  the  way  into  the  tunnel.  It  was  here  that  the 
old  woman  had  evidently  done  her  heroic  and 
secret  digging,  for  the  passage  sloped  very  steeply 
for  ten  or  twelve  feet  through  new,  fresh  earth  so 
soft  that  the  explorers  sank  into  it  to  their  ankles, 
while  once  a  sifting  of  loam  came  tumbling  down 
off  the  walls.  Baumgarten,  who  was  in  the  lead 
after  the  housekeeper,  stopped  fearfully. 

"It  won't  fall,"  said  Mrs.  Fields,  turning.  "The 
top's  just  the  same  as  it  always  was.  I  only  dug 
out  the  bottom." 

At  the  end  of  the  slope  they  came  suddenly  into 
a  large  subterranean  gallery  where  the  footing  was 
hard.  Mrs.  Fields  stopped  with  the  lantern  and 
the  others  gathered  around  her.  Here  they  could 
stand  erect  and,  looking  up,  they  saw  that  the 
top  and  the  sides  were  held  up  by  hand-hewed 
beams  set  close  together.  Stiles  looked  back  the 
way  they  had  come. 

"How  long  did  that  take  you?"  he  asked. 

"Only  four  nights,"  she  replied. 


2i4  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Stiles  and  Baumgarten  looked  at  each  other  and 
the  latter  shook  his  head  in  despair.  Rose,  who 
had  come  through  the  tunnel  clinging  to  Stiles, 
slipped  one  hand  through  his  arm  and  one  through 
Eksberger's.  With  a  little  shudder,  she  drew  them 
both  close  to  her  for  protection  as  she  had  done  the 
first  night.  Mrs.  Fields  held  the  lantern  over  her 
head  and  its  light  brought  out  weirdly  the  wonder- 
ing, upturned  faces. 

What  a  band  to  gather  in  that  dank  gallery  of  a 
lost  colonial  mine  to  unearth  by  flickering  lantern- 
light  the  marks  of  men  forgotten  a  hundred  years ! 
— Eksberger  the  trumpet  of  Broadway,  Baum- 
garten the  ponderous  and  immaculate  salesman, 
Rose  the  dainty  and  fragile  comedienne — all  the 
picture  of  utter  sophistication,  but  all  now  sub- 
dued and  with  faces  transformed  by  awe  and 
wonder. 

Stiles  reached  over  his  head  and  touched  one  of 
the  beams  gingerly.  The  surface,  which  still  bore 
the  marks  of  the  adz,  was  hard  enough,  but  it 
gave  to  his  touch  and  showed  that  the  heart  of  the 
wood  was  soft  and  rotted. 

"This  must  have  been  the  end  of  a  sap,"  he 
said.  He  looked  back  toward  the  cellar.  "I  don't 
know  much  about  mining,  but  I  shouldn't  have 
looked  for  copper  so  near  the  surface." 

"I  don't  guess  they  knew  very  much  about  it 
themselves,"  volunteered  Mrs.  Fields  in  her  new 
sociability.  "My  father's  grandfather,  he  was  a 
miner,  and  my  father  always  told  about  hearing 


CRATER'S   GOLD  215 

him  say  that  all  the  copper  he  ever  see  would  go 
in  a  four-quart  pail." 

It  occurred  to  Stiles  that  such  a  rush  of  confi- 
dence had  better  be  drawn  on.  It  might  never 
come  again. 

"Mrs.  Fields,"  he  said,  "the  judge  told  me  that 
your  family  was  Spanish." 

Mrs.  Fields  grunted.  "That's  what  they  say.  I 
don't  know  whether  it's  so  or  not.  My  father,  he 
might  have  known." 

Stiles  looked  at  Rose,  then  at  Baumgarten, 
then  at  Eksberger.  The  lantern-light  was  strong 
enough,  but  their  faces  brought  no  response,  no 
indication  that  they  saw  anything  strange  in  the 
statement.  At  this  new  wonder,  he  realized,  he 
must  marvel  alone. 

Only  a  few,  few  years  before,  this  woman's  fa- 
thers had  lived  in  the  Pyrenees.  Before  the  Moors, 
before  the  Goths,  before  the  Romans,  before  the 
Phenicians,  before  the  Celts,  before  the  first  faint 
traces  of  history  itself,  her  race  had  established 
itself,  and,  through  all  the  millenniums  of  wars  and 
migrations  in  Europe,  had  bitterly  kept  its  purity 
intact.  A  hundred  years,  fifty,  this  side  of  the 
water,  and  even  the  memory  had  been  lost.  With- 
out a  struggle,  the  Basque  had  become  plain 
Yankee.  Even  the  name  had  been  stunted.  A 
nasal  Inchgerry  was  all  that  remained  of  it  now. 

Stiles  looked  at  the  others  standing  around  him, 
their  upturned  faces  greenish  pale  in  the  lantern- 
light.  For  that  matter  what  did  any  one  of  them 

15 


216  CRATER'S    GOLD 

know  of  his  heritage?  What  did  Eksberger,  what 
did  Baumgarten,  both  Americans,  unable  to 
speak  a  syllable  of  another  tongue?  Could  either 
one  have  told  with  certainty  where  his  family  had 
lived  three  generations  before?  What  had  he 
known  himself — or  cared — until  the  death  of  the 
last  of  a  fading  line  had  brought  him  back  to  close 
the  book  on  a  name  he  did  not  even  bear  ?  Except 
for  that  accident  he  would  have  been  just  like 
the  others,  living,  smugly,  a  life  of  which  the  very 
roots  did  not  go  back  of  yesterday.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  judge  knew.  The  judge  saw  as  living 
figures  men  who  had  died  before  this  country  was 
born — Solomon  Crater,  the  massacreed  uncle,  the 
West  Injy  merchants.  But  the  judge,  for  all  his 
tradition,  for  all  his  background,  how  was  his 
life  the  richer?  Where  was  his  culture  from  Har- 
vard? Where  was  the  thrill  of  his  shipwreck  near 
Singapore?  Where  was  his  romance  of  the  days 
of  the  forty-niners?  Wherein  even  did  he  speak 
purer  English  than  Eksberger?  The  judge?  As 
Baumgarten  would  have  said,  with  a  shrug, 
"There  you  are!" 

"But  where  are  the  cows?"  asked  Eksberger, 
suddenly. 

"They're  here  just  a  piece,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields. 
"The  rest  is  easy.  Don't  step  on  the  beams; 
they're  soft." 

She  picked  up  the  lantern  and  led  the  way 
down  the  passage  in  which  the  timbers  arched 
overhead  like  the  ribs  and  deck  beams  of  a  ship. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  217 

At  intervals  one  or  two  lay  fallen.  She  rounded 
a  curve  and,  for  a  second,  the  light  of  the  lantern 
came  to  them  only  by  reflection. 

"It  smells  like  the  circus,"  said  Eksberger. 

"That's  them,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields.  "Soo, 
Blacky!" 

In  a  larger  underground  chamber  around  the 
curve  the  four  cows  were  standing,  chewing  their 
cuds  with  the  nonchalance  of  domestic  animals, 
perfectly  unconcerned  so  long  as  they  were  fed. 
With  a  proprietorship  which  was  mounting  to 
pride,  Mrs.  Fields  held  the  lantern  over  the  tail 
of  the  farthest.  She  looked  at  the  visitors  ex- 
pectantly and  Rose  followed  Stiles  at  the  safe  dis- 
tance from  the  animal's  heels. 

"The  darling!"  she  exclaimed,  her  eyes  bright- 
ening in  the  lantern-light.  Between  the  last  cow 
and  the  wall,  a  little  black  head  looked  up  at  her 
in  friendly  impudence  and  widespread  little  black 
legs  tottered  in  front  of  her.  Suddenly  she  burst 
into  a  laugh.  "What  in  the  world  has  he  got  on ?" 

Mrs.  Fields  looked  at  Stiles.  "It  was  tore  any- 
way," she  said.  "I  thought  you'd  cotched  me 
that  night.  If  you'd  come  three  or  four  minutes 
later,  you  would  have." 

"If  I'd  come  three  or  four  minutes  later,"  re- 
plied Stiles,  "you  might  have  been  shot."  He 
picked  up  the  corner  of  a  pink  padded  quilt  which 
was  tied  with  a  girth  of  bed-ticking  around  the 
little  black  calf.  "You're  welcome  to  it,"  he 
said.  "What  else  is  there  here?" 


2i8  CRATER'S   GOLD 

The  vault  in  which  they  were  standing  had  evi- 
dently been  used  for  some  sort  of  headquarters, 
possibly  the  head  of  the  shaft,  for  the  top  was 
still  ceiled  with  planks,  while  rotted  boards 
crumbled  into  a  sort  of  red  dust  under  foot. 

"This  is  as  far  as  it  goes,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields, 
"  leastways  as  far  as  it  goes  now.  The  rest  is 
water.  Better  not  go  there,"  she  called,  sudden- 
ly. "You'll  break  your  neck!" 

With  his  usual  talent  for  exploration,  Eksberger 
had  started  strolling  nonchalantly  around  the 
cavern,  but  he  stopped  with  a  start  at  the  house- 
keeper's voice.  One  scare  was  enough  from  that 
mine.  With  a  willingness  almost  effusive,  how- 
ever, Mrs.  Fields  picked  up  the  lantern  and  walked 
to  his  side. 

"Careful,  now,"  she  warned,  "if  you  want  to 
see  it.  Don't  git  ahead  of  me." 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  chamber  to  that  by 
which  they  had  entered  was  the  rotted  frame  of 
a  broad,  heavy  doorway  with  two  planks  propped 
crisscross  to  bar  it.  Mrs.  Fields  took  these  down, 
and,  holding  the  lantern  at  arm's-length  before 
her,  she  shuffled  through  the  doorway,  not  lifting 
her  feet  from  the  ground,  while,  inch  by  inch,  the 
others  followed.  For  eight  or  ten  feet  from  the 
doorway  the  footing  sloped  moderately  and  then, 
with  a  jerk,  the  housekeeper  stopped.  At  their 
feet,  like  the  mouth  of  a  funnel,  yawned  inky 
blackness.  The  old  woman  picked  up  a  chunk 
of  dirt  and  tossed  it  off  into  space.  With  a  vel- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  219 

vety,  uncanny  silence  it  vanished  from  sight,  while 
the  faces  in  the  lantern-light,  leaning  over  Mrs. 
Fields 's  outstretched  arm,  waited  tense  and  ex- 
pectant. Five  seconds  passed  and  then  came  a 
faint  hollow  splash. 

"Water,"  said  Baumgarten,  significantly. 

"I  should  say  it  was  water,"  exclaimed  Eksber- 
ger,  in  a  dry  voice,  "and  except  for  the  grace  of 
Heaven  it  might  have  been  me." 

"Don't,  Charlie,"  said  Rose,  with  a  shudder. 
"Hadn't  we  better  get  back?  It  might  fall  or 
something." 

"If  it  hasn't  fallen  for  a  hundred  years  I  guess 
it  won't  fall  now,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields. 

She  drew  back  her  lantern  from  over  the  shaft 
and  turned,  but  as  she  did  so,  Eksberger,  crowding 
forward,  made  a  sudden  motion  to  throw  an  old 
piece  of  iron  and  struck  her  arm  violently. 

"There,  you've  done  it!"  she  cried. 

The  lantern  flashed  up  and  down  and  then  there 
was  utter  darkness. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

/CURIOUSLY,  it  was  Baumgarten,  Baumgar- 
^>  ten  the  pampered  sybarite,  who  rose  to  the 
crisis. 

"Don't  any  one  stir  an  inch,"  he  said,  in  a  low, 
firm  voice. 

Before  that,  there  had  been  an  instant  of  light 
and  dark  and  of  confusion  in  which  nobody  had 
been  quite  sure  what  had  happened.  After  that, 
they  had  found  themselves  standing  in  damp, 
pitchy  blackness,  hearing  one  another's  breathing. 

Even  when  Baumgarten's  voice  came  out  at 
their  shoulders,  no  one  else  dared  to  speak.  Each 
waited  for  some  one  else  to  ask  the  terrible  ques- 
tion. Finally,  from  sheer  tension,  Rose  began  to 
sob,  softly.  Some  one  else  began  to  stir.  After 
that,  without  asking,  they  all  seemed  to  know 
that  they  all  were  still  there.  Stiles  suddenly  dis- 
covered that  he  had  been  standing  with  eyes 
tight  shut.  He  opened  them  slowly,  cautiously, 
but  it  made  no  difference.  It  was  just  as  black 
as  before,  but,  curiously,  with  his  eyes  open,  he 
seemed  able  to  hear  better — and  smell.  He  could 
now  smell  distinctly  the  cold,  swamp  air  from  the 
shaft  at  their  feet. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  221 

Again  Baumgarten  took  command.  "Light  a 
match,  somebody." 

There  was  another  silence  and  again  all  felt  a 
foreboding  of  what  would  prove  to  be  the  awful 
truth.  In  a  queer,  strained  voice,  Eksberger 
spoke  what  they  knew  was  the  common  fate: 
"I  haven't  got  one.  Have  you?" 

Nobody  answered  and  Eksberger  broke  out  in 
a  sort  of  falsetto,  "Stiles,  light  a  match,"  and  then, 
as  Stiles  did  not  answer,  he  cried  out  in  fright: 
"Stiles!  Stiles!" 

"Yes,  yes,  I'm  here,"  answered  Stiles.  He  had 
become  conscious  of  a  faint  scent  from  Rose's 
gown  and  he  had  been  wondering  whether  it  would 
reassure  her  or  only  startle  her  the  more  to  touch 
her.  After  he  had  spoken  he  did  put  out  his 
hand  and  touched  her  shoulder.  Like  a  child 
she  came  into  his  arm  and  he  held  her.  He 
could  feel  her  heart  beating  rapidly.  There  was 
another  moment  of  that  uncertain  groping  and 
then  Baumgarten  could  be  heard  in  a  husky 
voice : 

"I  think  I've  got  just  one,  but  for  the  love  of 
Heaven  don't  anybody  move." 

With  ears  strained,  they  waited  ages  while 
Baumgarten  fumbled  through  his  pockets.  They 
could  hear  his  stiff  collar  creak  as  he  moved  his 
arms.  "Here  it  is,"  he  said  at  last.  "Now  give 
me  the  lantern." 

"The  lantern?"  cried  Mrs.  Fields.  "The  lan- 
tern is  down  the  hole!" 


222 

A  sinking  feeling  seemed  to  follow.  Baumgar- 
ten  grunted  at  last: 

"Well,  anyway,  we'll  make  the  most  of  it." 

He  could  be  heard  making  motions  to  strike 
the  match,  but  Stiles  stopped  him. 

"Wait  a  moment,"  he  said.  "That  match  is 
precious.  Before  we  light  it,  let's  find  out  where 
we  all  are." 

"I'm  here,"  said  Miss  Fuller,  speaking  two 
inches  under  his  chin. 

"Who's  that?"  asked  Stiles,  as  his  groping 
hand  touched  a  coat-sleeve. 

' ' That's  me, ' '  replied  Eksberger.  ' '  Here's  Stuffy. 
Where's  Mrs.  Fields?" 

"All  right  now,"  commanded  Stiles.  "Keep 
hold  of  hands." 

"Are  you  ready?"  called  Baumgarten.  They 
could  feel  him  poised. 

"All  ready,"  said  Stiles. 

The  breathing  became  strained  again  as  they 
waited  nervously  for  the  brief  moment  of  light. 
Once,  twice,  they  heard  the  match  rub  over  cloth 
and  then  a  muttered  word — "Hell!" 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  Eksberger,  pet- 
tishly. 

Baumgarten  did  not  reply  and  the  match  again 
rubbed  over  cloth.  "I  thought  so,"  he  said  at 
last. 

"What's  the  matter?'*  insisted  Eksberger. 

"It's  a  safety  match.  I  knew  there  was  some- 
thing wrong,"  muttered  Baumgarten  after  a  mo- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  223 

ment,  "because  I  never  carry  matches  in  that 
pocket,  never  carry  'em  loose  anyway." 

They  stood  helpless,  waiting  for  any  suggestion. 

"If  I  were  only  sure  just  where  the  door  is," 
complained  Stiles. 

"It's  right  on  my  left,"  said  Eksberger. 

"Well,  is  it?"  insisted  Stiles.  "I'm  all  turned 
round." 

"Rose  must  be  nearest,"  suggested  Baum- 
garten.  "She  came  in  last." 

"Just  the  same,"  said  Stiles,  "it  won't  do  to 
take  any  false  steps.  We  can't  be  a  foot  away 
from  that  shaft." 

"I  think  I  can  find  it,"  said  Mrs.  Fields,  "if 
you  hold  on  to  me." 

"Are  there  any  other  holes?"  asked  Stiles. 

"Yes,  two,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields,  "but  not  here. 
I  know  where  they  be.  You  hold  me  up  and  I'll 
try  it." 

Feeling  her  way  over  faces  and  coats,  she  made 
her  way,  each  man  passing  her  up  the  line  until 
she  reached  Stiles.  "Now  then,"  she  said,  with 
assurance,  "but  take  little  steps.  Don't  stir  up 
the  dirt." 

With  one  hand  clutching  her  arm  and  with  the 
other  supporting  Rose,  Stiles  followed  her,  inch 
by  inch.  Behind  him  Eksberger  held  his  arm 
and  Baumgarten  clutched  Eksberger's. 

"This  would  be  funny,"  said  Eksberger,  "if—" 

"Well,  it  isn't  funny,"  interrupted  Baumgarten. 
"You  save  your  jokes  until  we  get  on  safe  ground." 


224  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Shuffling  and  testing  the  ground  with  his  feet, 
half  carrying  Rose,  it  seemed  to  Stiles  fifty  yards, 
before  his  foot  struck  something  hard. 

"What's  that?"  he  exclaimed. 

"The  door  sill,"  replied  Mrs.  Fields.  "Step 
high  and  then  you're  all  right." 

The  inner  chamber  was  blacker  if  possible  than 
the  head  of  the  shaft,  but  the  air  was  better  and 
they  felt  almost  as  if  they  had  reached  home. 

"Are  we  safe?"  asked  Rose,  as  she  felt  Stiles 
relax. 

"Safe  and  sound,"  he  replied.  The  girl  slipped 
out  of  his  arm,  but  fumbled  her  hand  through  it 
in  the  now  familiar  way. 

Behind  them,  Baumgarten  and  Eksberger  could 
be  sensed  moving  around,  but  not  one  of  them 
could  see  six  inches  ahead.  The  blackness  was  so 
oppressive,  so  different  from  the  darkness  of  a 
room,  that  they  felt  themselves  groping  as  if  to 
ward  off  something,  even  when  standing  still. 

"Now  you  stay  there,"  commanded  Mrs. 
Fields,  "and  don't  move  hand  or  foot." 

A  minute  later  her  voice  could  be  heard  from 
an  incredible  distance.  "All  right,  I've  found  it." 

"Found  what?"  called  Rose,  eagerly. 

"The  entrance  to  the  passage,"  explained 
Baumgarten. 

"Stand  still,"  commanded  the  housekeeper, 
sharply,  and  with  that  parting  word  the  shuffling 
and  rustling  of  her  movements  suddenly  ceased. 

' '  Mrs.  Fields !"  called  Stiles,  but  no  answer  came. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  225 

With  her  departure,  a  loneliness  and  a  vague- 
ness more  dread  than  ever  seemed  to  settle  down 
in  the  vault  and  with  it  a  silence.  Each  one  felt 
that  all  of  the  others  had  gone  and  hesitated  to 
say  the  first  word.  After  a  moment,  out  of  the 
cavern,  came  a  slow  breathing. 

"What's  that?"  asked  Baumgarten  in  a  low 
voice. 

"The  cows,"  replied  Stiles. 

"Oh,"  muttered  Baumgarten.  "I'd  forgotten 
they  were  there." 

There  came  another  long  silence  and  then  Eks- 
berger  spoke  with  tentative  cheerfulness.  "You 
there,  Rose?" 

"Yes,  I'm  here." 

Another  silence. 

"Where  are  you,  Stuffy?" 

"I'm  here." 

Some  quality  in  the  black,  echoing  void  seemed 
to  change  their  voices  from  place  to  place,  for, 
when  Eksberger  spoke  again,  he  seemed  to  have 
moved  from  behind  Stiles  to  far  off  on  his  left. 

"Well,  anyway,"  he  exclaimed,  decidedly,  "I'm 
going  to  sit  down.  No,  I'm  not,  either,"  he  added, 
hastily. 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"Wet — and  cold  as  ice.  Say,"  he  suggested  in 
a  lower  voice,  "suppose  she  never  came  back." 

"Don't  worry,"  answered  Baumgarten  from 
some  other  point  in  black  space.  "She  may  not  care 
about  us,  but  she'd  never  abandon  those  cows." 


226  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"I  know,  but  suppose  she  fell  down  a  hole 
herself." 

"Oh,  don't,"  begged  Rose,  almost  sobbing,  and 
Baumgarten  intervened. 

"Cut  it  out,  Charlie,  cut  it  out." 

Unconsciously  they  were  relaxing,  becoming  ac- 
customed to  that  uncanny  conversation,  questions 
and  answers  heard  in  familiar  voices,  but  shot  out 
of  changing  points  of  the  darkness  from  figures 
invisible.  There  followed  a  very  long  silence,  but 
a  silence  more  tolerable,  and  then  Eksberger's 
voice  could  be  heard  saying,  musingly: 

"I  wonder  if  cows  would  get  blind  if  you  left 
them  down  in  a  place  like  this  long  enough?" 

With  the  fatuous  earnestness  of  people  stranded, 
uneasy,  and  helpless,  their  voices  discussed  the 
idea  for  minutes.  One  who  has  wondered  what 
people  would  do  if  suddenly  volleyed  out  of  their 
usual  world,  cast  on  a  desert  island,  or,  for 
that  matter,  translated  to  another  era,  would  do 
well  to  study  that  moment  down  in  that  damp, 
pitchy  mine,  when  once  the  first  wave  of  fright 
had  subsided. 

"I  knew  a  man  once,"  said  Eksberger's  voice. 
"He  was  a  comedy  juggler." 

Even  in  the  solid  darkness,  Baumgarten  could 
be  felt  bristling  with  a  sudden  and  jealous  interest. 

"Who  was  that?"  he  asked,  sharply. 

"Nobody  you  know,"  replied  Eksberger's 
voice,  teasingly.  "He  was  one  of  the  'Juggling 
Jordans' — his  real  name  was  McCarthy — but  he 


CRATER'S   GOLD  227 

lost  three  fingers  in  the  revolving  door  of  the  post- 
office  in  Montreal,  and  then  he  couldn't  be  a  jug- 
gler any  more,  so  he  went  to  training  beagles." 

' '  Training  what  ?"  asked  Rose  from  Stiles's  elbow. 

"Beagles,"  replied  Eksberger.  "What  did  you 
think  I  said?" 

"I  thought  you  said  eagles." 

4 '  Eagles ! ' '  retorted  Eksberger,  scornfully.  ' '  How 
could  he  train  eagles?" 

"I  don't  see  why  he  couldn't  train  eagles  just 
as  well  as  he  could  train  beagles.  What  are 
beagles?" 

"Dogs,"  replied  Eksberger  from  the  height  of 
superior  knowledge. 

' '  Well,  wha t  did  he  train  them  to  do  ?    Tricks  ?" 

"Tricks?"  snorted  Eksberger.  "Of  course  not. 
He  trained  them  to  hunt." 

"Hunt  what?"  persisted  Rose. 

"Why,  why — "  answered  Eksberger.  "I  don't 
know.  What  do  beagles  hunt,  anyway?" 

"Search  me,"  said  Baumgarten,  speaking  ap- 
parently from  a  comfortable,  stationary  attitude 
in  the  darkness.  "What  do  they  hunt,  Stiles?" 

"Foxes  or  something,  don't  they?"  suggested 
Stiles,  startled  at  his  own  sudden  bass  voice.  "I 
never  saw  one  except  in  a  picture.  All  I  know 
is  that  they  always  wear  white  gaiters  when  they 
hunt  them." 

"The  beagles?"  asked  Rose. 

"Oh,  say!"  interrupted  Eksberger,  impatiently. 
"Who's  telling  this  story,  anyway?" 


228  CRATER'S    GOLD 

4 'Go  ahead,"  said  Rose,  demurely.  "Juggling 
Jordan  lost  three  fingers  in  the  post-office  and 
went  to  training  beagles  in  white  gaiters.  What 
then?" 

"I've  forgotten  what  I  was  going  to  say, 
now,"  replied  Eksberger.  "What  were  we  talk- 
ing about?" 

"About  cows  getting  blind  if  you  left  them  in  a 
mine  long  enough,"  suggested  Stiles. 

"Oh  yes,"  Eksberger  recalled.  "That  was  it. 
Well,  this  fellow  used  to  do  a  trick  in  which  he 
caught  five  lighted  candles  between  the  fingers  of 
each  hand." 

"I  see  why  he  had  to  quit,"  suggested  Baum- 
garten,  and  then  he  added:  "That  must  have 
been  some  hand  he  lost.  I've  only  got  four  spaces 
in  mine." 

In  the  darkness  Eksberger  counted.  "Well,  any- 
way, what  difference  does  it  make?  Call  it  four. 
The  point  was  that  he  hadn't  tried  to  do  this  trick 
for  four  or  five  years,  but  one  day  he  was  going 
out  to  his  barn  when  a  fellow  came  along  with  a — " 

"Listen!"  whispered  Rose,  suddenly.  "What 
was  that?" 

Instantly  all  of  them  were  listening  intently. 
At  first  they  heard  nothing,  then  two  cows  clashed 
horns  at  the  other  side  of  the  cavern. 

"Cows,"  exclaimed  Eksberger.  "Well,  any- 
way— " 

"Keep  still,"  whispered  Rose.  "It  wasn't  that. 
I  heard  somebody  talking." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  229 

They  stood  in  silence. 

"There!"  whispered  Rose,  and  all  of  them  heard 
a  faint  crackling  sound. 

"It's  Mrs.  Fields,"  said  Eksberger  aloud,  but 
Baumgarten  checked  him  roughly.  "Keep  still. 
It's  behind  us." 

In  the  darkness  Rose  pressed  against  Stiles, 
while  all  of  them  strained  their  ears.  There  was 
no  doubt  about  it  now.  They  did  not  dare  move, 
they  did  not  dare  even  turn,  but  more  and  more 
distinctly,  behind  them,  came  the  crackling  sound 
as  of  some  one  walking  over  brush. 

"I  hear  it !"  whispered  Eksberger,  and  distinctly 
they  heard  a  mumble  of  voices.  Some  one  of  them 
stirred. 

"Stand  still!"  ordered  Baumgarten. 

The  crackling  grew  suddenly  louder  at  their 
backs  and  then  a  voice  said  so  clearly  that  it 
seemed  to  be  right  in  the  room: 

"Twenty-five  thousand  dollars!" 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

A 5  the  crackling  had  sounded  nearer  and  nearer, 
the  little  group  in  the  cavern  had,  by  some 
process  of  gravitation,  drawn  in  closer.  Its 
members  found  themselves  touching  one  another, 
seemingly  counseling  silence.  Again  the  voice  was 
followed  by  crackling  and  then  it  sounded  again, 
this  time  over  their  heads.  It  was  a  casual  voice, 
speaking  casually: 

"It  hasn't  changed  since  I  was  a  boy.  The  very 
same  rubbish  is  here." 

Eksberger's  face  leaned  across  Stiles's.  ' '  Pullar, ' ' 
he  whispered,  but  all  of  them  knew  it  already. 
' '  I  know  where  he  is,"  Eksberger  whispered.  ' '  He's 
in  the  old  cellar.  It  can't  be  ten  fecL" 

"Sst!"  ordered  Baumgarten;  but  then  came  a 
shout  almost  at  their  elbows  —  "Hallooo!" — a 
pause  and  then  a  shout  from  far  off — "Hallooo!" 

It  was  Eksberger's  happy  lot  in  life  to  assume 
continually  that  he  had  discovered  things  already 
perfectly  obvious  to  every  one  else.  "Do  you  get 
it?"  he  whispered.  "That's  what  he's  doing. 
He's  shouting  down  here.  He  said  that  he  used  to 
count  nine.  I'm  going  to  answer." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  231 

''Shut  up!"  hissed  Baumgarten. 

For  a  moment  it  did  seem  as  if  Eksberger  had 
disclosed  their  position.  For  a  moment  there  was 
a  silence  and  then  a  voice  spoke,  a  woman's  voice, 
spoke  precisely  and  a  little  impatiently:  "You 
must  see  how  we  feel  about  the  whole  matter, 
Judge." 

In  recalling  that  moment  afterward,  three  of 
the  four  would  have  sworn  that  they  looked  at  one 
another  and  grinned,  darkness  or  no  darkness,  but 
whether  the  judge  saw  or  not,  they  were  never  to 
learn,  for  his  voice  was  a  mumble. 

"We  don't  want  to  be  unjust  or  hasty,"  went 
on  Mrs.  Pullar,  "but  you  must  realize  that  all  of 
us  have  spent  a  great  deal  of  pains  and  money  up 
here.  We  think  of  the  town  as  our  own.  We  dis- 
covered it,  in  a  manner  of  speaking." 

It  was  too  much  for  Eksberger.  "What  did  I 
tell  you?"  he  whispered,  exultantly,  but  no  one 
replied.  They  were  listening  too  keenly,  but  a  low 
mumble  from  the  judge  was  their  only  reward. 
Mrs.  Pullar  herself  must  have  moved,  for  after 
that  her  voice,  too,  was  only  a  mumble,  then  sud- 
denly down  it  came  clearly  again: 

"Isn't  that  how  you  all  feel,  Louise?" 

"The  question  being,"  whispered  Eksberger, 
"who  is  Louise?"  and  this  time  nobody  checked 
him.  They  had  all  wondered  that. 

At  last,  slow  and  profound  as  that  of  a  judge  on 
his  bench,  came  the  voice  of  the  judge  in  the  cellar 
above : 

16 


232  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"As  to  who  discovered  this  place,  ma'am,  they 
might  be  those  as  would  want  to  dispute  you." 

"Good  old  judgie,"  whispered  Eksberger. 

"But,  Judge,  of  course  you  know  what  I 
mean." 

"Yes,"  drawled  the  judge,  slowly,  "I  know 
what  you  mean." 

There  came  a  silence  and,  knowing  the  judge, 
they  could  see  him  deliberate. 

"They  was  a  feller" — his  voice  came  at  last 
and  Stiles  chuckled  aloud,  for,  as  if  he  had  been 
on  the  spot,  he  could  see  Mrs.  Pullar's  impatient 
tolerance — "they  was  a  feller  come  up  to  see  me 
one  time  with  a  prowject  for  doing  away  with  the 
locks  on  the  Erie  Canal.  He  was  a  nice  feller, 
too.  His  name  was  Spencer.  Well,"  he  broke 
off,  suddenly,  "did  you  find  him?" 

The  listeners  below  heard  a  crash  on  the  debris 
of  the  cellar  above  and  then  Pullar's  voice,  "No, 
he's  not  there  yet,  but  Mrs.  Fields  has  come  back, 
and  she  says  he'll  be  there  in  a  minute." 

"That's  nice  to  know,"  whispered  Eksberger, 
but  the  use  of  his  name  so  calmly  up  there  had 
given  Stiles  the  strangest  start  of  the  whole  after- 
noon. It  seemed  such  a  ridiculous  and  yet  such 
an  uncanny  link  between  the  sane  world  above 
and  that  fantastic  place  in  which  they  were  stand- 
ing below.  It  was  like  hearing  people  speak  of  you 
after  you  were  dead.  Above  them  the  voices  were 
sounding  in  mumbles  again.  Only  from  time  to 
time  did  a  sentence  come  down  with  that  strange 


CRATER'S   GOLD  233 

and  almost  magnified  clearness.  One  came  to 
them  finally  in  Pullar's  voice,  spoken  with  that 
same  incredible  matter-of -f actness : 

"Well,  Judge,  if  you'll  be  good  enough,  I  guess 
we'd  better  go  in  and  wait.  You  won't  come 
with  us,  dear?" 

"Dear"  evidently  would  not,  although  they 
could  not  hear  her  say  so,  for  the  next  thing  they 
heard  was  Pullar's  voice: 

"Why  don't  you  and  Louise  take  the  car  and 
then  send  it  back?" 

There  seemed  to  be  reasons  why  not,  for  Pullar 
gave  in.  "Well,  be  careful  crossing  the  brook. 
I'll  be  home  for  dinner." 

There  followed  more  crashing  and  then  a  long 
silence.  The  group  in  the  mine  began  to  relax 
and  stir  when  there  came  a  new  voice,  presumably 
that  of  Louise:  "Ooh,  isn't  it  black?  I'm  going 
to  throw  something  in." 

"Please,  please,"  urged  Mrs.  Pullar's  voice,  and 
her  arguments  evidently  were  sound  for  no 
splash  followed.  Instead  came  Mrs.  Pullar's  half- 
whining  tones:  "Bob  is  so  unreasonable.  He 
ought  to  have  done  this  two  weeks  ago.  Now  it 
will  cost  us  three  times  as  much." 

In  the  darkness  Stiles  started  to  move,  but 
Baumgarten  checked  him.  To  Stiles's  amaze- 
ment, he  also  had  apparently  been  debating  the 
same  ethical  point.  "Keep  still,"  he  whispered. 
"We  can't  help  it.  If  they  don't  want  it  heard, 
they  shouldn't  say  it." 


234  CRATER'S    GOLD 

With  some  hesitation,  Stiles  fell  back  in  his 
place  and,  after  a  series  of  mumbles,  Mrs.  Pullar 
could  be  heard  again: 

"Father  was  always  in  terror  that  some  one 
would  try  to  start  up  the  mine.  They'd  be  fools 
to  do  it,  but  just  imagine  what  Eden  would  be 
like  all  full  of  coal  heaps  and  miners!" 

Louise  seemed  to  murmur  a  question,  for  Mrs. 
Pullar  replied: 

"What?  Oh  no,  the  judge  says  he'll  never  do 
that.  He's  the  kind  of  man  to  let  things  run  on 
just  as  they  are.  It's  not  the  mine  so  much  we're 
afraid  of,  but  suppose  that  Mr.  Eksberger  really 
did  buy  it." 

There  came  a  responsive  murmur  above  and 
Eksberger  nudged  Stiles.  At  least  he  nudged 
somebody  and  it  happened  to  be  Stiles.  Again 
came  the  voice  protesting: 

"Well,  I  don't  think  it's  nonsense  at  all,  and 
neither  does  Bob,  and  neither  does  Jack.  The 
judge  doesn't  seem  to  say  much  one  way  or  the 
other,  but  just  imagine  if  once  he  should  come 
here  and  build — " 

Beside  him,  Stiles  heard  Eksberger  chuckle  so 
loudly  that  he  missed  the  rest  of  the  sentence 
above.  The  reply  from  the  unknown  Louise 
came  in  the  usual  murmur  and  then  Mrs.  Pullar 
cried  out,  indignantly:  "What  would  it  mean? 
What  would  it  mean  if  Mr.  Eksberger  once  got  a 
foothold  here?  Why,  don't  you  realize  that— 

She  had  stopped  for  a  moment,  but,  before  she 


CRATER'S    GOLD  235 

could  finish,  Stiles  had  turned  quickly  and  taken 
a  half-step  toward  the  mouth  of  the  shaft.  He 
threw  back  his  head  and  shouted  in  deep,  rolling 
tones : 

"Arma  virumque  cano!" 

He  waited  a  moment  and  then  added  in  a  slow, 
mournful  wail  of  utter  despair: 

"Lingua  Toscana  in  bocca  Romano," 

Above  them  the  group  in  the  mine  heard  a 
shriek  and  a  crashing,  another  crashing  and  bump- 
ing sounded  right  in  the  cavern,  and  then  a  light 
flashed  into  the  chamber. 

"You  scared  the  cattle,"  said  Mrs.  Fields.  She 
had  come  at  the  moment  around  the  curve  in  the 
gallery  bearing  not  only  two  lanterns  but  indi- 
vidual candles  for  the  return  trip.  "Young  Pullar 
is  up-stairs  waiting  to  see  you,"  she  added.  "His 
wife  and  another  lady  is  out  looking  down  the 
old  cellar." 

"I  bet  they're  not  there  now,"  laughed  Eks- 
berger;  then  he  turned  to  Stiles.  "What  did  you 
want  to  do  that  for?  If  you'd  only  kept  quiet  I 
might  have  learned  something  about  myself." 

"You've  said  it.  You  might,"  answered  Baum- 
garten,  gruffly.  "Let's  get  out  of  here." 

He  took  a  lantern  from  Mrs.  Fields  and  they  fell 
into  line,  but,  with  the  rescue,  Eksberger  was  in 
high  humor. 

"Stuffy,"  he  cried,  from  his  place  in  the  line  as 
they  walked  through  the  gallery,  simple  enough 
in  the  lantern-light — "Stuffy,  you  didn't  get  me. 


236  CRATER'S    GOLD 

You  don't  know  what's  happened  the  last  few 
days.  You  don't  know  what  those  people  are 
scared  of  me  for." 

"I  know  a  damn  sight  more  than  you  think  I 
do,"  retorted  Baumgarten.  He  had  held  the  party 
together  largely  by  his  own  will  the  past  hour  and 
his  nerves  were  going.  "Charlie,"  he  added,  "you 
ought  to  hire  a  tutor  so  that  you  would  get  wise  to 
yourself." 

Eksberger  stopped  and  turned.  "What  do  you 
mean,  get  wise  to  myself?" 

For  reply,  Baumgarten  merely  waved  his  hand. 
"Hold  up  that  candle.  You're  dripping  the  grease 
all  over  your  coat. 

"Holy  Moses!"  he  exclaimed  with  relief,  a  mo- 
ment later,  as,  the  last  of  the  line,  he  burrowed  his 
way  out  of  the  tunnel,  "I  never  thought  that  a 
cellar  would  look  sweet  to  me." 

"Me,  either,"  said  Eksberger.  "Let's  get  up.  I 
want  to  stand  in  the  sunlight." 

"You'll  have  to  hurry  if  you  want  to  do  that," 
remarked  Mrs.  Fields.  "It's  quarter  to  seven." 

' ' Quarter  to  seven  ?"  exclaimed  Rose.  '  'And  my 
train  went  at  six."  She  turned  to  Stiles  quickly 
and  looked  at  him  suspiciously.  "Did  you  do  that 
on  purpose?" 

Stiles  drew  a  long  breath.  "Hardly,"  he  an- 
swered. ' '  Not  all  of  it,  that  is. ' ' 

"Stiles,"  said  Baumgarten,  "if  I  thought  that 
you  did  any  of  it  on  purpose  I'd  throw  you  back 
in  that  hole  and  seal  up  the  entrance." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  237 

"In  the  mean  time,"  said  Eksberger  from  the 
foot  of  the  stairs,  "haven't  you  people  been  under- 
ground long  enough?" 

"Don't  wait  for  me,"  called  Stiles,  but  he  him- 
self turned  to  his  housekeeper.  "Did  you?"  he 
asked.  "Did  you  tell  Mr.  Pullar  where  we  were?" 

Once  back  in  a  normal  world,  however,  Mrs. 
Fields  seemed  to  have  drawn  back  into  her  shell, 
to  give  signs  of  her  old  taciturnity. 

"I  never  was  much  of  a  hand  to  tell  things," 
she  said,  gruffly. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

WITH  a  curiosity  which  he  had  to  admit  was 
not  without  its  grain  of  gentle  malice,  Stiles 
pushed  on  to  the  main  floor  of  the  house,  but  his 
callers  had  gone  and  the  manner  of  their  going 
could  only  be  imagined.  Baumgarten  was  in- 
specting, with  indifferent  interest,  the  few  dingy 
pictures  which  adorned  the  walls  of  the  study, 
while  Rose  and  Eksberger  were  standing  outside 
in  the  fading  daylight.  The  sun,  a  gaudy  and 
dusty  red,  just  showed  a  parting  segment  over 
the  dark,  wooded  mountainside  which  rose,  a 
sheer  wall  of  black  pines  and  rock  faces,  a  mile  to 
the  west.  Eksberger  tossed  it  a  kiss. 

"Good-by,  old  chap;  you  could  shine  all  night 
for  all  of  me." 

Rose  was  standing  beside  him  with  her  arm 
linked  through  his,  but  Stiles  had  learned  that 
the  attitude  with  her  was  purely  impersonal. 
Indeed,  as  he  came  up  himself,  she  held  out  the 
other  arm  and  completed  the  trio.  Standing  to- 
gether, they  watched  the  last  rim  of  scarlet  dis- 
appear behind  the  dark  mountain  wall,  which, 
as  the  sun  sank  behind  it,  seemed  to  grow  higher 


CRATER'S    GOLD  239 

and  steeper,  loomed  suddenly  drear  and  for- 
midable. Stiles  had  watched  that  effect  before 
and  thought  that  the  Balkans  must  look  like  that. 
Why  Balkans  he  could  not  have  told,  except  that 
it  seemed  to  suggest  mountain  fastnesses  and 
robber  barons. 

"What's  the  name  of  that  mountain,  Stiles?" 
asked  Eksberger,  suddenly. 

"Bald  Mountain,"  replied  his  host,  promptly. 

"Why  do  they  call  it  that?"  asked  Rose. 

Stiles  laughed.  "I  don't  know  that  they  do. 
I  just  made  that  up.  I  never  saw  a  region  that 
didn't  have  a  Bald  Mountain,  so  why  not  this 
one?" 

Such  vagueness,  however,  did  not  appeal  to  an 
active  mind  like  the  impresario's.  "Seems  to 
me,"  he  said,  "you  know  mighty  little  about  this 
place  of  yours." 

Stiles  had  to  admit  it,  and  the  three  lapsed  into 
another  silence,  while  the  dark  shadow  of  the 
mountain  swept  visibly  down  upon  them.  With 
its  coming  the  air  grew  perceptibly  cooler.  Little 
fragments  of  mist  began  to  form  on  the  swamp- 
land in  the  foreground  and,  as  if  obeying  a  leader's 
baton,  a  glee  club  of  frogs  burst  into  a  sleigh-bell 
chorus.  Scents,  too,  seemed  suddenly  awakened 
by  the  coming  of  night — a  tart,  cold  dampness 
from  the  swamp-land,  slightly  acid,  and  then  a 
faint  suggestion  of  sweet  grass. 

It  was  a  moment  potent  with  a  huge,  sad  beauty, 
and  it  affected  the  three  of  them  alike  as  they  stood 


24o  CRATER'S    GOLD 

there  staring  toward  the  forbidding  wall  of  moun- 
tain, the  manner  of  each  unconsciously  tuned  to 
the  scene.  The  queer  lights  of  the  hour  brought 
out  in  Rose,  more  strongly,  a  fragile  prettiness. 
Her  cheeks  seemed  slightly  hollowed,  her  color 
a  little  higher  and,  with  a  fine  strand  of  hair 
fallen  over  her  face,  she  seemed  more  than  usually 
wistful.  In  that  vast  setting  she  was  a  pure 
exotic,  but,  for  that  very  reason,  the  artificial 
daintiness  of  her  face  and  dress  made  her,  to 
Stiles,  a  more  strange  and  exciting  note  in  the 
picture. 

For  the  sheer  spell  of  the  moment  he  feared 
to  break  the  silence  and,  besides  that,  he  was  in 
dread  that,  at  any  minute,  either  Rose  or  Eksber- 
ger  would  announce  a  decision  to  leave  that  night. 
On  the  contrary,  when  Eksberger  spoke,  it  was 
quite  to  the  opposite  effect: 

"Well,  Stiles,  I  guess  you've  got  us  on  your 
hands  for  another  night  whether  you  want  us  or 
not." 

Stiles  laughed.  "I  was  afraid,"  he  said,  "that 
you  would  try  to  think  up  some  absurd  way  to 
get  back  to  town  to-night.  It  would  be  very 
lonely  without  you." 

He  spoke  with  such  sincerity  that  even  Eks- 
berger responded: 

"That's  awfully  white  of  you,  old  man,"  he 
said,  but,  even  at  that,  Stiles  waited  with  some 
anxiety  for  what  Rose  might  say. 

She  said  nothing,  merely  turned  toward  the 


CRATER'S    GOLD  241 

house  with  that  look,  it  might  have  been  called 
sadness,  it  might  have  been  called  indifference, 
that  Stiles  had  come  to  recognize  in  her  more  and 
more  frequently.  The  more  he  saw  of  her  the 
more  the  girl  seemed  to  live  in  a  permanent  mood 
of  reserve,  perhaps,  better,  a  mood  of  resignation, 
and  only  at  unusual  moments  to  allow  herself 
to  be  forced  out  of  it.  It  was  as  if  she  did  not 
find  the  world  as  a  whole  just  to  her  liking,  but 
had  learned  from  experience  to  be  politic  about 
it.  That  was  her  attitude  now  as  she  turned 
toward  the  house.  If  she  had  spoken  she  might 
have  said,  "What  else  can  we  do?"  That  at  least 
was  Stiles's  analysis  of  her,  and,  to  a  man  like 
Stiles,  his  analysis  of  her  was  far  more  important 
than  what  she  might  actually  be.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  when  she  did  speak,  it  was  not  at  all  what 
he  had  expected. 

"How  inviting  that  looks!"  she  exclaimed. 

As  they  turned,  a  sudden  warm  bulb  of  light 
had  sprung  up  from  the  big  study  lamp  and,  as 
they  entered  the  room,  a  fire  was  beginning  to 
crackle  on  the  hearth.  Baumgarten  rose  from  it, 
puffing,  his  cuffs  shot  out  from  his  coat  sleeves, 
a  smudge  of  black  on  his  cheek. 

"I  thought  that  would  look  good  to  you,"  he 
said,  with  an  air  of  proprietorship,  and  if  there 
had  been  an  exotic  poetry  about  the  fragile  Rose 
in  the  face  of  the  bleak  mountain  wall,  there  was, 
equally,  a  homely  prose  about  Baumgarten  light- 
ing a  fire. 


242  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"But  by  the  whim  of  fate,"  thought  Stiles,  as 
he  saw  him,  "there  goes  a  family  man." 

"Where  did  you  get  the  wood?"  he  asked, 
aloud. 

"There's  about  twenty  cords  of  it  stacked  up 
there  in  the  shed,"  replied  Baumgarten,  brushing 
the  splinters  and  bits  of  bark  from  his  coat. 
"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  have  been  in  this 
house  for  three  weeks  and  never  lighted  a  fire?" 

"I  never  thought  of  it,"  answered  the  lord  of 
the  manor,  shamefaced. 

"Good  gosh,  Stiles!"  exclaimed  Eksberger, 
"what  in  the  world  have  you  been  thinking  of? 
As  near  as  I  can  make  out  you  have  been  living 
up  here  in  a  trance." 

"That  probably  describes  it,"  confessed  Stiles. 

Baumgarten  could  not  take  his  proud  eyes  from 
his  fire.  "What  we  ought  to  have  now  is  a  lot  of 
apples  roasting  in  front  of  that  and  a  jug  of  cider." 

"Yes,"  mocked  Eksberger,  "and  play  guessing 
games.  From  my  point  of  view  a  Bronx  cock- 
tail would  listen  much  better." 

"That,"  said  Stiles,  "is  one  of  the  things  of 
which  I  have  been  thinking." 

"Your  sins  are  forgiven,"  answered  Eksberger, 
promptly.  "Take  me  gently  by  the  hand  and 
lead  me  thither. 

"For  the  love  of  Mike,  what  do  you  call  that?" 
he  asked  a  few  moments  later  as  Stiles  came  back 
with  a  large  glass  fruit- jar  and  four  full-sized 
glasses. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  243 

Stiles  held  the  jar  to  the  light  and  displayed  its 
misty  orange  contents.  "That,"  he  replied,  "is 
a  proof  of  the  Darwinian  theory." 

"I  don't  care  what  it's  a  proof  of  so  long  as  it 
has  a  kick,"  retorted  Eksberger,  as  Stiles  began 
pouring  the  contents.  ' '  Here,  that 's  enough  for  me. 
That  may  look  like  cider,  you  know,  but  it  isn't." 

Rose,  unlike  her  escort,  had  a  habit  of  sticking 
to  the  point.  "What's  Darwinian?" 

Stiles  held  up  the  jar  again.  He,  too,  loved  to 
finish  a  theory. 

"According  to  Darwin,"  he  said,  "all  living 
creatures  adapt  themselves  to  the  limitations  of 
their  surroundings.  If  they  don't,  they  fail  to 
survive." 

"In  other  words,"  interrupted  Eksberger,  "if 
you  hadn't  learned  to  mix  cocktails  in  a  flower- 
pot you  wouldn't  have  survived.  Is  that  it?" 

Stiles  laughed.  "Darwin  took  volumes  and 
volumes  to  say  just  what  you  have  said  in  one 
sentence." 

Eksberger  turned  quickly  to  Rose.  "Now  tell 
me  whether  or  not  I'm  a  genius." 

"You  pay  your  press  agent  to  do  that,"  she 
retorted.  "Why  should  I  do  his  work  for  him?" 

"Crude,  Rose,  crude!"  replied  Eksberger,  in 
mock  sorrow.  He  turned  back  to  Stiles.  "Now 
that  just  shows  you!  Here  I've  tried  to  be  a 
father  to  this  helpless  girl — shielded  her,  guarded 
her,  worked  for  her,  and  you  see  how  she  treats 
me.  What  would  Darwin  call  that?" 


244  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"He'd  call  it  off,  if  he  never  got  any  more  en- 
couragement than  you've  ever  got,"  suggested 
Baumgarten.  The  tone  of  command  which  he 
had  acquired  in  the  mine  was  still  in  his  voice, 
and  Eksberger  said  no  more  on  that  subject. 
With  the  others  he  stared  at  the  rising  flames  of 
the  fire,  but  his  buoyancy  was  unchecked. 

"You  know  what  we  ought  to  do?"  he  began 
at  last.  "We  ought  to  get  out  those  old  papers 
the  judge  brought  back  and  see  what  we  can 
find." 

Baumgarten  looked  at  him  suspiciously.  ' '  What 
old  papers?"  he  asked. 

For  a  moment  Eksberger's  eye  danced  merrily. 

"No  funny-business,  now,"  warned  Baumgar- 
ten, and  Eksberger  saw  that  it  was  no  use. 

"I  was  going  to  try  Stuffy  with  the  old  manu- 
script," he  said,  and  he  told  of  his  own  downfall. 

"You  could  have  fooled  me,"  admitted  Baum- 
garten. "I  wouldn't  have  known  one  old  paper 
from  another  if  you  hadn't  given  yourself  away." 

"We  won't  fool  you,"  promised  Eksberger. 
"These  papers  are  real  —  at  least  so  far  as  we 
know." 

Rose,  who  had  the  keen  ear  of  the  party,  raised 
her  head  suddenly  and  they  all  heard  a  heavy 
step  on  the  piazza.  A  moment  later  a  cheery  voice 
called, ' '  Good  evening. ' ' 

The  lamp  and  the  fire  made  all  the  world  out- 
side complete  darkness,  but,  after  a  moment  of 
staring,  Stiles  could  distinguish  familiar  outlines 


CRATER'S    GOLD  245 

beyond  the  screen  door.  "Come  in,  Judge,"  he 
called. 

The  judge  walked  into  the  room.  "That  looks 
hearty,"  he  said,  glancing  down  at  the  flames. 

Baumgarten  still  held  his  glass  in  his  hand  and 
Stiles  looked  at  the  judge,  hesitating.  He  picked 
up  the  fruit- jar  tentatively. 

"Judge,  will  you  join  us?" 

The  judge  glanced  at  the  jar  and  the  glasses. 
"Well,"  he  said,  slowly,  "it's  a  curious  thing.  I 
very  seldom  take  anything  to  drink  at  all,  but 
when  I  do  it's  just  at  this  time  o'  day." 

Stiles  laughed.  ' '  I  suppose, ' '  he  suggested, ' '  that 
to  do  the  thing  right,  we  really  ought  to  have  a 
good  mug  of  flip." 

The  judge  shook  his  head.  "Young  man,  flip 
doesn't  go  with  this  season  o'  year.  No,"  he  went 
on,  in  that  almost  professional  tone  into  which  he 
slipped  whenever  reminiscence  was  started,  ' '  there 
'ain't  be'n  no  flip  in  considerable  time.  You  used 
to  see,  now  and  then,  what  they  called  flip,  but  it 
wa'n't  flip.  Flip,  to  be  reel,  needs  pumpkin  cider." 

Eksberger  surprised  them  all.  "It  sounds  like 
taverns  and  stage-coaches.  Did  you  ever  see  a 
show  called  'She  Stoops  to  Conquer'?" 

Baumgarten  winked  at  Stiles.  "One  of  Zieg- 
f eld's,  wasn't  it?" 

"Go  to  hell!"  retorted  Eksberger  in  a  rapid 
whisper;  but  the  judge,  lost  in  his  reverie,  did  not 
even  hear  him. 

"Ye-es,  ye-es,"  he  said,  slowly,  his  eyes  on  the 


246  CRATER'S    GOLD 

firelight,  "they  was  plenty  of  it  around  the  old 
taverns.  Captain  Trumbull  kept  tavern  here  when 
I  was  a  boy,  up  beyond  where  the  power  plant  is 
now.  They  was  a  stage-coach  driver  named  Rod- 
ney in  those  days,  a  big  man  with  a  red  face." 

"From  what  you  tell  us,  I  imagine  they  all  had 
red  faces,"  suggested  Eksberger. 

The  judge  chuckled,  "Pretty  much." 

He  did  not  seem  to  mind  the  interruptions,  but 
they  halted  his  narrative. 

"The  stage-coaches  in  those  days,"  he  went  on 
at  last,  "only  had  a  door  on  one  side." 

"Why  was  that?"  asked  Eksberger,  promptly. 

The  judge  tossed  his  head.  "I  suppose  they  was 
some  reason,  but  I  don't  know  it.  I  presume  it 
wouldn't  have  done  any  good  if  they  had  had  two 
doors,  for  one  side  was  always  loaded  down  with 
produce,  kegs  of  oysters  and  such  things.  Any 
rate,  it  give  the  drivers  a  chance  to  show  oft. 
When  they  come  to  a  tavern  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  road — and  it  always  seemed  as  if  all  the  taverns 
was  on  the  wrong  side — they  used  to  crack  their 
whips  and  come  around  with  a  fine  hoodie-do. 
This  Rodney  he  was  a  master  at  that. 

"Captain  Trumbull,"  the  judge  resumed,  after 
one  of  his  customary  pauses,  "was  really  the  last 
of  the  old-time  tavern-keepers.  Soon  after  he  died 
the  railroad  come  through  as  far  as  Felsted.  They 
was  stages  still,  but  they  wa'n't  the  same,  just  run 
from  Felsted  to  little  towns  outside.  The  old 
stages  run  in  relays  clear  from  Boston  to  Albany 


CRATER'S   GOLD  247 

and  Captain  Trumbull  was  known  all  over  the 
state.  It  was  his  brother  who  was  John  Cady's. 
grandfather." 

"Pullar's  brother-in-law?"  asked  Stiles,  in  sur- 
prise. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  judge,  "that  must  make 
Pullar's  wife  his  granddaughter,  too,  doesn't  it?" 
He  paused  and  the  little  lines  crept  into  the  cor- 
ners of  his  eyes.  "Perhaps  they  didn't  tell  you 
that." 

Stiles  shook  his  head  and  the  judge  went  on 
charitably : 

"Well,  no  reason  why  they  should  or  shouldn't. 
It  was  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of.  The  tavern- 
keeper  was  sometimes  the  most  important  man 
in  town.  Any  rate  he  was  the  busiest.  He  was 
always  called  'Captain'  ex  officio,  as  Deacon 
Cressy  used  to  say  when  he  seized  the  reins  of 
government  at  a  school-meeting.  Besides,  their 
grandfather  wa'n't  here  long.  He  went  to  New 
York  as  a  boy  and  made  his  money  in  the  cotton 
business.  Their  mother  married  a  Cady  —  his 
father,  I  think,  was  Collector  of  the  Port  of  New 
York — and  when  the  Cadys  come  back  they  was. 
another  race,  another  race  entirely,  but  old  Cap- 
tain Trumbull  he  was  a  fine  man,  too." 

To  the  little  group  in  front  of  the  fire  it  might 
have  seemed  that  he  was  wandering,  but  Stiles,  at 
least,  knew  that  he  was  merely  collecting  and 
sorting  his  material.  With  the  judge,  every  nar- 
rative must  start  from  a  sound  genealogical  basis. 
17 


248  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Well,  at  any  rate,"  he  went  on,  at  last,  "this 
man  Rodney  took  the  stage  at  Felsted  and  drove 
it  as  far  as  Lebanon.  They  drove  on  schedule 
those  days,  but  Rodney  he  always  made  it  a 
point  to  whip  up  his  horses  two  or  three  miles 
back  and  get  into  Eden  ahead  o'  time,  so  he  could 
sit  and  have  a  good  mug  of  Captain  TrumbulTs 
flip." 

The  judge  looked  up  and  saw  Mrs.  Fields  stand- 
ing grimly  at  the  door,  as  white-aproned,  as  un- 
concerned, as  if  she  had  never  heard  of  a  mine. 
"Sho!"  he  exclaimed.  "Ain't  you  had  your  sup- 
per yet?" 

"Judge,"  begged  Stiles,  "won't  you  come  out 
and  sit  with  us,  perhaps  have  a  little  coffee  or 
something?" 

The  judge  shook  his  head.  "Thank  you  just 
the  same.  I  had  a  little  matter  that  I  wanted 
to  talk  to  you  about.  If  it's  all  the  same  to  you, 
I'll  sit  here." 

And  there  they  found  him,  motionless,  when 
they  came  back,  his  hands  grasping  firmly  the 
arms  of  his  chair,  his  head  slightly  bowed,  and  his 
eyes  fixed  on  the  flames.  What  pictures  he  must 
have  seen  in  those  coals!  What  memories  must 
have  been  aroused  by  the  shadows  of  that  once 
splendid  room  in  which,  for  half  a  generation,  he 
had  probably  not  sat  as  a  welcome  guest!  Or 
did  he  see  pictures?  Stiles  wondered.  Some- 
times it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  the  only  man 
in  the  world  who  still  reveled  in  that  once  favorite 


CRATER'S    GOLD  249 

pastime.  Anyway,  the  judge  himself  was  a 
picture. 

"Now  for  Rodney,"  exclaimed  Eksberger, 
briskly  rubbing  his  hands.  Then  his  dramatic 
eye  took  in  the  scene,  and  he  added:  "Say,  you 
know  what  we  ought  to  do?  We  ought  to  turn 
out  that  lamp  and  sit  just  in  the  firelight." 

To  Eksberger  questions  were  merely  matters  of 
form.  He  reached  out  and  turned  down  the  light 
before  he  knew  whether  the  others  wished  it  or 
not.  He  was  safe  enough  in  this  case.  Stiles 
pushed  up  a  big  armchair  for  Rose,  and  the 
others  grouped  themselves  in  a  little  semicircle. 
Baumgarten  produced  his  red-banded  cigars  from 
his  inexhaustible  pockets  and  the  four  men  lit 
them  expectantly.  Beside  him,  Stiles  saw  Rose's 
fingers  hesitating  over  a  cigarette  which  she  had 
brought  from  the  dinner-table.  He  thought  he 
might  help  her. 

"Judge,"  he  said,  cautiously,  "didn't  women 
use  to  smoke  in  the  old  days?" 

"Yes,"  agreed  the  judge,  "nigger  women 
especially." 

A  snort  from  Eksberger  came  from  the  other 
side  of  the  fire  and  the  judge  looked  around. 
"Bless  you,  ma'am,"  he  said,  "smoke  if  you 
want  to.  I  don't  mind.  I  was  thinking  of  pipes." 
But  Rose  let  the  cigarette  slip  out  of  sight  in  the 
folds  of  her  skirt. 

"Now  for  Rodney,"  repeated  Eksberger. 

"Sho!    It   wa'n't   much,"   replied   the   judge. 


25o  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"I  was  just  telling  you  this  Rodney  drove  the 
stage  from  Felsted  to  Lebanon.  You  may  never 
have  heerd  of  it,  but  in  the  winter  of  eighteen 
thirty-six  they  was  a  terrible  blizzard.  Course  I 
don't  remember  much  about  it  myself.  I  was 
only  seven  years  old  then,  but  I  heerd  the  story  a 
good  many  times.  It  began  to  snow  on  a  Thurs- 
day noon,  and  the  stage  was  due  at  Trumbull's 
tavern  around  six.  The  only  passenger  was  a 
little  old  man,  a  foreigner.  He  might  have  been 
a  Frenchman.  I  don't  know.  Anyway  he  was 
dretful  anxious  to  get  to  Eden.  All  the  way  up, 
so  Rodney  told  the  story,  he  kept  sticking  his 
head  out  the  window  and  saying,  'You  think  we 
can  make  it,  coachman?' 

"That  didn't  help  any,"  explained  the  judge. 
"A  stage-coach  driver  and  a  coachman  was  two 
different  things  entirely.  A  stage-coach  driver 
wa'n't  accustomed  to  being  my-good-man'd  by 
anybody,  but  still  this  foreigner  kept  on  calling, 
'You  think  we  can  make  it,  coachman?'  After  a 
while  Rodney  made  out  he  didn't  hear  him,  just 
kept  driving  on  and  on  and  the  snow  getting  deeper 
and  deeper  until  the  little  old  man  was  hanging 
half  out  the  window.  'You  think  we  can  make  it, 
coachman?'  he  says. 

' '  'Bout  that  time  Rodney  was  beginning  to  won- 
der whether  he  could  make  it  himself.  Over  be- 
yond Keystone  they's  a  stretch  where  the  wind 
comes  howling  down  straight  off  Bald  Mountain." 

Eksberger  broke  in,  mischievously,  "Stiles  told 


CRATER'S   GOLD  251 

us  that  this  mountain  here  by  the  house  was  called 
Bald  Mountain." 

"No,"  said  the  judge,  "that  one  is  called  Sugar 
Loaf.  Bald  Mountain  is  eight  miles  away.  They's 
a  level  stretch  and  then  a  gap  between  two  hills 
where,  some  winters,  the  snow  piles  up  high  as  a 
house. 

"Well,  the  horses  was  making  harder  and  harder 
work  of  it  all  the  time.  Rodney  had  only  that  one 
passenger,  but  he  had  a  pile  of  freight.  He  used  to 
boast  that,  in  all  the  sixteen  years  he'd  be'n  driving 
that  stage,  if  he'd  set  out  to  make  a  place  he'd 
always  made  it,  but  it  begun  to  look  to  him  now  as 
if  his  record  was  going  to  be  broke.  And  all  the 
time  the  Frenchman  was  sticking  his  head  out  the 
window  and  calling,  'You  think  we  can  make  it, 
coachman?' 

"Finally  Rodney  got  so  mad  he  climbed  right 
down  off  the  box,  a  thing  a  stage-driver  wa'n't 
supposed  to  do  under  any  circumstances.  'Now 
look  here,'  he  says,  'if  you  say  that  to  me  again, 
I'll  throw  these  lines  right  over  the  horses'  backs 
and  let  'em  loose.'  He  was  the  best-hearted  man 
in  the  world,  this  Rodney  was,  but  he  could  look 
real  fierce  when  he  wanted.  The  Frenchman 
seemed  scared,  but  he  fidgeted  and  fussed  and 
picked  up  a  little  bag  he  carried  and  put  it  on  the 
seat  and  then  put  it  on  the  floor  again,  and  then 
put  it  on  the  seat  again,  and  Rodney  drove  on. 
Finally  they  wa'n't  going  more  than  a  walk  and  a 
mighty  slow  walk  at  that. 


252  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Well,  sir,  when  they  got  well  into  this  gap  I'm 
telling  you  about,  the  coach  gave  a  lurch  and 
come  to  a  stop  and  the  Frenchman  forgot  himself. 
'Do  you  think  we'll  make  it,  coachman?'  he  says. 

"'That's  enough!'  says  Rodney,  and  with  that 
he  climbs  down  off  the  box  and  goes  to  the  door. 
'Mister,'  he  says,  'this  is  where  you  and  me 
spends  the  night.' 

"'In  the  snow?'  says  the  Frenchman,  hugging 
his  little  satchel  as  if  it  was  full  of  gold  watches. 

'"You  and  me  could  do  it  all  right,'  says  Rod- 
ney, 'but  the  horses  couldn't.  No,  they's  a  farm- 
house up  here  where  they'll  take  us  in.  Come  on, 
now,'  he  says,  but  the  Frenchman  never  moved. 

"  'Coachman,'  he  says,  'I'll  give  you  five  dollars 
to  get  me  to  Eden,'  but  Rodney  just  shook  his 
head. 

'"You  'ain't  got  money  enough,'  he  says,  'to 
make  me  do  what  I  say  I  won't  do.' 

"'Ten  dollars,'  says  the  Frenchman. 

"'No!'  roars  Rodney,  stamping  his  feet,  partly 
because  he  was  mad  and  partly  because  they  was 
cold. 

"'Twenty,'  says  the  Frenchman,  and  Rodney 
hesitated. 

"You  understand,"  explained  the  judge,  "that, 
in  those  days,  twenty  dollars  was  twenty  dollars. 
'Twenty  dollars,'  says  the  Frenchman,  taking  out 
a  big  double-eagle,  and  Rodney  he  fell. 

"'All  right,'  he  says.    'Set  where  you  air.' 

"So  up  he  climbs  on  the  box  and  speaks  to  his 


CRATER'S    GOLD  253 

horses.  They  tugged  and  heaved,  but  the  coach 
never  moved,  and  down  he  gets  again,  puzzled. 

'"Why  don't  you  take  off  the  baggage  and  leave 
it?'  suggests  the  Frenchman,  but  Rodney  shakes 
his  head. 

"'Do  you  think  you  could  mind  them  horses?' 
he  asks. 

"Bless  you!"  exclaimed  the  judge.  "Them 
horses  couldn't  have  moved  if  they  wanted  to,  all 
blowed  as  they  was  and  hanging  their  heads  and 
trying  to  get  their  tails  up  to  the  wind. 

"So  Rodney  he  leaves  the  Frenchman  chatter- 
ing and  stamping,  with  his  little  bag  in  one  hand 
and  the  lines  in  the  other,  and  goes  back  half  a 
mile  to  where  a  family  of  the  name  of  Brewster 
was  living  at  that  time.  They  had  a  son  that 
was  the  third  man  killed  in  the  Civil  War,  but 
this  was  the  father.  He  kept  the  toll-gate  and 
sometimes  worked  on  the  roads  for  people  that 
had  rather  pay  in  money  than  do  their  share 
themselves.  Old  Man  Brewster  had  a  pair  of 
pure  Spanish  jacks,  the  only  ones  I  ever  heerd 
of  in  this  part  of  the  country,  although  they  was 
common  enough  in  the  south.  They  was  pretty 
little  animals,  slender  and  shiny  like  a  deer,  and 
they  could  draw  as  much  as  most  horses,  although 
they  didn't  look  stout  enough  to  pull  a  setting 
hen  off  the  nest.  Old  Man  Brewster  paid  three 
hundred  dollars  for  them,  they  claim,  which  was 
cheap  at  that.  He  was  calc'lating  to  make  his  fort- 
une populating  the  entire  countryside  with  mules, 


254  CRATER'S   GOLD 

but  I  guess  they  was  something  wrong,  for  the 
male  jack  wa'n't  as  successful  as  most,  and  all 
they  ever  got  was  one  hinny." 

"What's  a — ?"  began  Eksberger,  but  Baum- 
garten  silenced  him  with  a  gesture. 

"Course,"  went  on  the  judge,  "in  a  storm  like 
that,  the  old  man  he  didn't  like  the  notion  of  let- 
ting his  precious  jacks  go  out,  but,  working  for 
the  turnpike  company,  like  he  did,  he  was  afraid 
not  to.  So  back  he  comes  with  Rodney  and 
hitches  his  jacks  ahead  of  the  leaders.  Beside 
the  big  stage  horses,  so  Rodney  always  said — I've 
heerd  him  tell  the  story  a  dozen  times — those 
Spanish  jacks  looked  like  little  pussy  cats,  or  rab- 
bits maybe,  but  they  did  the  trick  and  moved 
the  old  stage  on  for  three  or  four  miles  further. 
They  was  three  of  them  now,  Rodney  and  the 
Frenchman  and  Old  Man  Brewster,  Rodney  yo- 
hoing  and  cursing,  and  Old  Man  Brewster  walking 
beside  the  jacks  and  urging,  and  the  Frenchman 
hugging  his  little  bag  and  shivering,  and  the  old 
stage  swinging  and  bouncing  until  they  thought 
the  straps  would  go  smash. 

"Then  suddenly,  when  it  was  thoroughly  dark, 
bang!  they  went  right  into  a  drift  and  stayed 
there.  The  Frenchman  seemed  to  think  he  was 
privileged  to  ask,  now  that  he'd  paid  for  it,  'Do 
you  think  we  can  make  it,  coachman?'  he  says. 

' '  'Well,  by  George  Harry !  I  don't  know  whether 
we  can  or  not,'  says  Rodney. 

"'You  never  will  in  this  world,'  says  Old  Man 


CRATER'S   GOLD  255 

Brewster.  Course  all  he  wanted  was  to  get  home 
and  get  his  jacks  under  cover. 

'"I'll  give  you  five  dollars  more  if  you'll  get 
me  to  Eden  to-night,'  says  the  Frenchman,  if  he 
was  a  Frenchman. 

'"Well,  if  you  want  it  that  bad,'  says  Rodney, 
'they  may  be  a  way  to  do  it.'  So  he  takes  the 
five  dollars  and  walks  on  up  the  road. 

"Down  beyond  where  the  railroad  track  crosses 
the  Felsted  road  now,"  explained  the  judge, 
"they  used  to  stand  a  little  yellow  house  with  a 
red  barn  across  the  road  and  a  line  of  big  sugar- 
maples.  The  maples  is  there  yet,  most  of  'em, 
but  the  house  and  barn  was  both  tore  down  when 
they  cut  the  grade  and  straightened  the  road  to 
make  the  state  highway.  A  man  named  Ebbets 
was  living  there  then.  He  was  a  pensioner  from 
the  War  of  1 8 1 2 .  Secundus  Ebbets,  his  name  was. 
Beside  what  the  government  allowed  him  he  made 
his  living  mostly  by  hunting  and  trapping.  He 
also  did  a  little  divining  for  wells  with  a  witch- 
hazel  fork  with  a  verse  of  Scripture  wound  around 
it,  but  he  wa'n't  so  successful  at  that.  Folks  said 
that  if  wells  had  be'n  filled  with  rum  'stead  of 
water  he  could  have  found  them  all  without  even 
the  witch-hazel  rod.  His  wife  was  part  Indian. 

"This  Ebbets  he  had  a  big  cream-colored  ox 
that  he  used  to  drive  like  a  horse  with  rope  lines 
and  a  wood  bit  made  out  of  one  of  the  quills  that 
he  used  to  draw  sap  from  the  maple-trees  with. 
He'd  bored  out  the  hole  big  enough  with  a  reamer 


2S6  CRATER'S   GOLD 

and  run  the  rope  through  and  knotted  it  at  each 
end.  Hitched  that  way,  the  ox  was  better  than 
a  team  o'  horses,  and  he  could  travel  pretty  good, 
too.  Oh,  he  was  a  big  feller,  that  ox.  I  imagine 
he'd  weigh  twenty  hunderd,  possibly  more. 

"Now  this  Ebbets  was  funny.  If  it  had  be'n 
a  mild  summer  night  and  a  traveler  had  asked 
him  to  come  out  and  hold  his  horse  for  a  moment 
while  he  went  off  to  talk  with  somebody  about  a 
piece  of  land,  he  wouldn't  of  done  it,  but,  being 
snowy  and  dark  and  blowing  and  cold  as  the 
sheets  in  the  pope's  spare  chamber,  he  couldn't 
of  asked  for  anything  better.  He  was  just  that 
notional.  So  he  takes  the  five  dollars  and  out  he 
conies  with  that  great  white  ox  and  clamps  him 
on  ahead  of  the  jacks.  And  on  they  goes. 

"Well,  sir,  when  they  gets  in  sight  of  Trum- 
bull's  tavern,  Rodney  he  lets  out  a  hoot  on  his 
horn — most  stage-drivers  had  just  an  ordinary 
horn,  but  he  had  a  key  bugle  and  he  could  blow 
two  notes — and  Captain  Trumbull  and  all  the 
fellers  that  was  hanging  around  the  barroom 
and  Mis'  Trumbull  and  the  help  in  the  kitchen, 
all  come  running  out  to  see  what  was  happening. 
They  hadn't  a  team  or  a  sleigh  or  a  living  thing 
gone  by  since  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  except 
one  man  on  horseback,  and  he'd  had  to  turn  and 
come  back,  and  they  didn't  expect  to  see  Rodney 
for  days.  I've  heerd  they  laughed  for  two  hours, 
some  of  'em,  to  see  that  procession — first  Ebbets 
dancing  along  beside  that  great  big  white  ox 


CRATER'S   GOLD  257 

and  singing  'Lundy's  Lane  and  the  Twelve  Pound 
Hat,'  and  then  Old  Man  Brewster  fretting  and 
fussing  over  his  little  jacks,  and  then  the  four 
big  coach  horses  and  Rodney  blowing  his  two 
notes  steady  so's  they  wouldn't  be  no  mistake, 
and  finally  the  coach  and  the  little  Frenchman 
with  a  handkerchief  tied  over  his  ears  and  sticking 
his  head  out  the  window  to  see  if  they'd  got 
there  yet." 

The  judge  paused  and  looked  into  the  fire  and 
gave  vent  to  his  silent  chuckle  as  he  always  did 
at  the  crucial  point  of  a  story. 

"And  so  they  got  there,  after  all,"  suggested 
Eksberger. 

"Yes,"  said  the  judge  as  if  he  had  been  waiting 
for  just  that  little  prompting.  "Course  they  was 
no  more  going  on  that  night.  Fact,  it  was  two  days 
before  they  was  even  able  to  start,  and  then  it 
was  only  on  runners.  They  put  up  the  horses,  and 
the  jacks,  too,  I  suppose,  and  Ebbets's  old  ox, 
and  Rodney  sails  into  the  bar  where  they  always 
had  a  big  fire  burning  with  four-foot  logs  snaked 
right  into  the  room  with  a  yoke  of  oxen. 

"'Well,  well!'  says  Captain  Trumbull.  'We'd 
give  you  up.' 

"  'Give  me  up,  eh?'  says  Rodney,  as  if  it  was  all 
his  doing.  'Captain  Trumbull,'  he  says,  'for  six- 
teen years,  four  months,  and  thirteen  days  I've 
be'n  driving  stage  from  Felsted  to  Lebanon,  and 
in  all  that  time  have  you  ever  known  me  to  fail 
to  get  to  a  town  that  I  set  out  to  get  to?' 


258  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"No,  the  captain  didn't  know  as  he  ever  had. 
The  loafers  around  the  bar  they  didn't  know  as 
they  ever  had,  either. 

"'No,  and  you  never  will,'  says  Rodney,  so 
loud  they  could  hear  him  all  over  the  house.  'But 
I'll  tell  you  this,  Captain  Trumbull,'  he  says.  'If 
I  ever  do  miss  a  point  on  the  line  it  '11  be  some 
point  where  they  don't  sell  Captain  Trumbull's 
flip.' 

"And  with  that  he  walks  over  to  the  bar  and 
takes  out  the  double-eagle  the  Frenchman  had 
give  him  and  slams  it  down  so  hard  that  it  jumped 
two  feet  in  the  air  where  he  caught  it  again. 

"They  used  to  do  that,"  the  judge  explained. 
"Anything  bigger  than  a  shilling  they'd  generally 
test  it  like  that.  They  was  lots  of  bad  money  going 
around  then.  In  some  places  they'd  have  a  flat 
stone  on  the  counter  just  for  that  purpose,  places 
where  they  sold  horses  and  cattle  especially.  I 
tell  you  the  loafers  opened  their  eyes  when  they 
see  the  gold  piece.  The  stage-drivers  got  good  pay, 
but  they  was  liberal  spenders  and  probably  Rod- 
ney 'd  never  had  that  much  at  one  time  in 
his  life. 

'"Boys,  what  '11  you  have?'  shouts  Rodney. 
'And  if  any  one  of  you  takes  anything  except  flip 
on  a  night  like  this  he  pays  for  it  himself. '  Course 
they  all  took  flip. 

'"Bout  that  time,"  continued  the  judge,  "the 
other  door  opened — the  door  from  the  hall — and 
in  come  the  little  old  Frenchman,  bowing  and 


CRATER'S   GOLD  259 

smiling  and  dressed  like  a  prince,  and  Captain 
Trumbull  runs  forward  to  meet  him.  He'd  had 
Alexander  Hill  Everett,  the  brother  of  Edward 
Everett,  stop  at  his  house  once  and  he'd  never 
forgot  it. 

'"Captain  Trumbull,'  says  the  Frenchman, 
'seven  years  ago,  on  a  night  like  this.  I  had  the 
honor  to  be  your  guest  and  I  had  this  drink  you 
call  flip.  Do  you  still  have  that  flip?' 

"The  captain  smiled  and  looked  at  the  boys 
standing  two  deep  in  front  of  the  fire  just  waiting 
for  the  pokers  to  get  hot  again. 

"'I  think  we've  got  a  little  left,'  he  says,  'and 
if  we  'ain't,  I  think  I  might  send  over  to  Lebanon 
and  get  you  some.' 

'"Captain  Trumbull,'  says  the  Frenchman,  'I 
hope  you  have.  I've  paid  twenty-five  dollars 
to  get  that  flip  to-night,  but  if  it's  going  to 
cost  me  twenty-five  more  I'm  willing  to  pay 
that,  too.' 

"Of  course,"  explained  the  judge,  all  the  boys  in 
the  bar  was  looking  at  him  pretty  curious,  and, 
when  he  says  that,  Rodney  walks  over  to  him  as 
if  he  was  going  to  eat  him. 

'  'Was  that  what  you  wanted?'  he  roars.  'Was 
that  why  you  was  so  set  on  getting  here  that  I 
nearly  foundered  my  horses  and  nearly  yanked 
the  linch-pins  out  of  my  coach?  Was  it  just  so 
you  could  savor  your  supper  with  Captain  Trum- 
bull's  flip?' 

"The  Frenchman  he  was  a  little  scared  then. 


260  CRATER'S    GOLD 

He  looked  around  at  all  those  strangers,  but  he 
had  to  admit  it  was  so. 

"'Well,  then,'  says  Rodney.  'Why,  bless  your 
soul,  sir!'  And,  walking  up  to  the  bar,  he  takes  up 
the  double-eagle  where  it  was  still  lying  there. 
'Here,'  he  says,  'here's  your  twenty  dollars.  Any 
man  that  would  go  further  than  I  would  to  get  a 
mug  of  Captain  Trumbull's  flip  is  too  good  to  give 
any  money  to  me!"1 

The  judge's  voice  stopped. 

"Fine!"  exclaimed  Baumgarten,  but  that  was 
all  that  was  said  for  minutes  after  the  judge  had 
finished  his  tale.  They  all  sat  looking  into  the  fire 
until  at  last  Eksberger  asked : 

"Judge,  what  did  you  say  that  stuff  was  made 
of?" 

"I  didn't  say,"  answered  the  judge.  "It 
wouldn't  do  any  good  if  I  did.  It's  no  use  without 
pumpkin  cider." 

They  sat  for  a  moment  more  in  silence  and  then 
Rose  asked,  timidly : 

"But  who  was  the  Frenchman  and  what  did 
he  have  in  that  little  bag?" 

The  judge  tossed  his  head. 

"That,"  he  confessed,  "I  can't  tell  you,  ma'am." 

His  cigar  had  gone  out  and  he  tried  to  light  it 
again. 

"Here,  let  me  give  you  a  fresh  one,"  said  Baum- 
garten, eagerly.  He  held  the  match  and  the 
judge  drew  the  first  puffs.  He  took  the  cigar 
from  his  lips  and  looked  at  it. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  261 

"No,"  he  said,  "I've  sometimes  wondered  my- 
self who  he  was.  Probably  just  somebody  travel- 
ing this  way.  In  those  days  some  mighty  queer 
characters  used  to  come  to  this  town." 

Eksberger  studied  the  flames  thoughtfully. 

"I  suppose  they  did,"  he  agreed. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

ROSE  was  standing  in  the  shadows  of  the 
porch,  leaning  against  one  of  the  pillars, 
when  Stiles  came  back  from  the  gate  after  speed- 
ing the  judge  on  his  way.  He  hardly  saw  her 
until  he  had  reached  the  foot  of  the  steps,  and 
even  then  she  had  not  spoken,  merely  stood  wait- 
ing with  a  languid  humor,  as  if  to  see  how  long 
it  would  be  before  he  should  discover  her  presence. 

"I  suppose  you  hain't  sold  your  place?"  the 
judge  had  asked,  as  Stiles  had  walked  with  him 
to  the  gate. 

"Not  yet,"  Stiles  had  answered. 

"That's  what  I  came  up  to  talk  about,"  the 
judge  had  continued,  "but  I  guess  it  '11  wait. 
Fact,  I  didn't  know  your  friends  was  still  here. 
This  ain't  an  hour  to  talk  business." 

No,  it  was  not  an  hour  to  talk  business.  The 
threat  of  coolness  at  sundown  had  not  been  ful- 
filled and  the  dying  down  of  the  wind,  with  the 
coming  of  darkness,  had  brought  out  another  soft, 
lazy  June  night.  Rose's  languid  attitude,  as  she 
leaned  against  the  pillar,  expressed  it  perfectly, 
and  Stiles  was  glad  enough  to  stop  beside  her. 
Through  the  window  he  could  see  Eksberger  and 


CRATER'S    GOLD  263 

Baumgarten  still  sitting  where  he  had  left  them, 
engaged  in  violent  conversation.  Baumgarten 
was  listening,  rolling  a  cigar  around  in  his  lips; 
Eksberger  was  talking  excitedly,  as  he  usually 
did,  moving  his  whole  body  in  jerks,  driving  his 
clenched  fist  into  the  palm  of  his  other  hand.  It 
looked  too  energetic  for  Stiles,  as  .it  evidently 
had  been  for  Rose. 

"Would  you  like  to  walk  around  a  while?"  he 
asked. 

For  answer  the  girl  pushed  gladly  away  from 
the  post  and  descended  the  steps  at  his  side. 
They  passed  under  the  spruce-trees  and  into  the 
road.  Stiles  turned  by  instinct  toward  that 
stretch  where  he  had  talked  that  morning  with 
Pullar,  but  the  girl  stopped  short. 

"Let's  not  go  that  way,"  she  said,  with  abrupt 
decision,  and  Stiles  remembered  that  she,  too,  had 
had  a  talk  of  some  moment  on  that  stretch  of 
road.  They  turned  instead  and  walked  to  the 
bridge  where  the  car  had  had  its  little  adventure. 
The  bed  of  the  brook  was  still  dry  and,  seeing 
no  interest  there,  they  sat  on  the  rail  facing  back 
toward  the  lights  of  the  house.  Stiles  nodded  with 
his  head. 

"What  are  they  so  excited  about  back  there  in 
the  study?" 

' '  About  a  new  show  called  '  Oh  La !  Sir !'  Stuffy 
keeps  saying  that  what  you  want  is  something 
that  gets  right  home  to  the  people,  and  Charlie, 
keeps  saying  that  what  you  want  is  a  wallop," 

18 


264  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"How  the  language  does  grow!"  mused  Stiles. 
"When  I  left  the  city  three  weeks  ago  they  were 
still  calling  it  'punch.'" 

"It's  all  the  same,"  replied  Rose,  " — punch, 
wallop,  jolt." 

"And  what  is  punch?    Do  you  know?" 

"No,"  confessed  Rose.  "Neither  does  Charlie 
Eksberger,  but  he  says  he  knows  it  when  he 
sees  it." 

"Does  he?" 

"The  way  most  people  do.  When  a  show  is  a 
big  success,  he  says  it's  because  it  has  punch. 
When  it  fails,  he  says  it's  because  it  didn't  have 
punch.  What  is  punch,  anyway?" 

"My  dear  lady,"  pleaded  Stiles,  "if  he  doesn't 
know  and  you  don't  know,  how  in  the  world  should 
I  know?" 

"I  bet  you  do,  all  the  same." 

Stiles  slipped  from  the  rail  of  the  bridge  to  his 
feet. 

"Miss  Fuller,"  he  said,  "of  all  the  compliments 
which  you  could  pay  me,  that  is  the  one  most 
likely  to  make  me  dizzy." 

Rose,  however,  saw  nothing  unreasonable 
about  it. 

"You  knew  what  love  was,"  she  said,  "and  I 
never  knew  any  one  else  who  did." 

"Love,"  replied  Stiles,  "is  partly  a  matter  of 
biology.  One  can  read  up  on  biology.  One  can- 
not read  up  on  punch." 

"But  you've  seen  shows,  haven't  you?" 


CRATER'S   GOLD  265 

"Yes." 

"And  some  had  punch  and  some  didn't?" 

"True,  quite  true." 

"Well,  then,  what  is  punch?" 

"You've  brought  this  on  yourself,"  replied 
Stiles.  "Punch  is  profound  truth  expressed  in  a 
piquant  manner." 

"Just  say  that  again,  will  you?" 

Stiles  laughed  and  repeated  the  definition. 
"What  I  mean  is  this:  Baumgarten  said  it,  only 
he  didn't  say  it  in  just  that  way.  When  you  read 
a  good  story  or  see  a  good  play  there  conies  a 
thing  at  which  you  say,  'Why,  I've  done  that  thou- 
sands of  times !'  If  you  have  done  it  thousands  of 
times,  every  one  else  in  the  audience  has  done  it 
thousands  of  times.  Adam  did  it.  That  makes  it 
profound  truth." 

"And  just  what  do  you  mean  by  a  piquant 
manner?"  demanded  Rose.  "Of  course  I  know, 
but  I  want  to  hear  you  say  it." 

"Miss  Fuller,  you  go  to  my  head,"  protested 
Stiles.  "Well,  Eksberger  has  a  piquant  manner. 
My  own  manner  I  should  not  call  piquant.  I 
should  call  it  ponderous." 

"And  what  do  you  call  my  manner?"  demanded 
Rose. 

"Your  manner,"  replied  Stiles,  "I  should  call 
an  extremely  wise  one  under  all  the  circum- 
stances." 

"I  told  you  you  knew,"  answered  Rose,  com- 
pletely satisfied.  "Why  don't  you  write  plays?" 


266  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"To  define  a  thing,"  replied  Stiles,  "and  to  do 
it  are  not  equally  easy.  I  defined  love  last  night, 
standing  in  front  of  the  fireplace — " 

"And  made  it  this  afternoon  sitting  on  the  old 
cellar,"  retorted  the  girl,  but  she  hurried  on  so 
expertly  that  he  had  no  time  to  follow  the  lead. 
"No,  seriously,  why  don't  you  write  plays?  There 
is  lots  of  money  in  it." 

"Is  that  all  you  see  in  it?"  asked  Stiles  with  a 
prudery  which  he  knew,  himself,  to  be  rather 
forced. 

Rose  knew  it  as  well  as  he  did. 

"No,  of  course  not,"  she  replied,  "but  that's 
one  of  the  things.  Don't  you  want  to  make 
money?" 

"My  dear  Miss  Fuller,"  answered  Stiles,  "you 
miss  the  whole  point  of  my  life  up  here  in  these 
dells  and  dingles.  I  am  never  going  to  do  anything 
again — ever." 

"Rot!" 

"No,  I'm  not.  All  my  life  I  have  had  to  do 
things  because  there  was  money  in  them,  or 
rather  because  there  wasn't  enough  money  in 
them  to  tempt  other  men  to  do  them.  Now  I'm 
through.  Don't  let  the  squalid  state  of  my  house 
deceive  you.  I'm  a  very  rich  man." 

Rose  proved  herself  a  very  human  young  woman. 

"Are  you,  really?"  she  asked,  excitedly. 

Stiles  laughed.  "I  meant  in  comparison  to 
what  I  always  have  been.  From  your  point  of 
view  I  am  not  rich.  I  am  poor  compared  to  the 


CRATER'S    GOLD  267 

glistening  youths  who  adore  you  from  the  front 
of  the  house  and  send  you  American  Beauties  and 
beg  you  to  dally  in  gilded  caf6s." 

"There  is  less  dallying  in  gilded  cafe's  than  peo- 
ple think,"  replied  Rose.  Then,  following  some 
logic  peculiarly  her  own,  she  asked,  "Did  you  ever 
know  an  actress  before?" 

"Never,"  confessed  Stiles. 

"Well,  what  did  you  think  one  would  be  like?" 

"I  had  only  the  stories  to  guide  me,"  Stiles 
explained.  "From  them  I  learned  that  there  were 
two  kinds.  One  kept  saying,  'Gee,  Mayme,  ain't 
he  swell?'  and  the  other  kept  saying,  'Oh,  I  want 
some  worth-while  man  to  lead  me  to  better 
things!'  The  latter  married  cowboys  en  masse" 

Rose  thought  it  over.  "I've  known  plenty 
of  the  first  kind,  but  I  never  knew  any  of  the 
second." 

"No?"  asked  Stiles,  musingly,  but  the  girl's 
stream  of  thought  was  still  digging  its  tortuous 
channel.  They  started  to  walk  on  again  and  she 
slipped  her  arm  through  his  in  the  usual  way,  then 
suddenly  he  found  that  their  hands  were  clasped. 
There  was  not  the  least  bit  of  coquetry  in  it  on 
her  part.  In  fact,  so  frank  was  the  act  that  it 
formed  a  stronger  defense  than  if  she  had  drawn 
her  hand  away.  The  very  openness  of  it  disarmed 
him.  For  him  to  have  made  any  further  advance 
after  that  would  have  seemed  rather  silly. 

"What  did  Stuffy  Baumgarten  tell  you  about 
me?"  she  asked.  "I  saw  you  talking." 


268  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"How  did  you  know  that  we  were  talking  about 
you?" 

"Oh,  I  can  always  tell,"  she  answered,  impa- 
tiently. "Can't  you  tell  when  people  are  talking 
about  you?" 

"Not  always,"  replied  Stiles.  "I  never  see  two 
deaf-and-dumb  people  talking  in  a  street-car  with- 
out thinking  that  they  are  making  remarks  on  the 
shape  of  my  nose." 

"Possibly  they  are,"  suggested  Rose. 

"Possibly,"  agreed  Stiles.  "Yes,  we  were  talk- 
ing about  you." 

From  his  side  came  a  voice  so  like  Baumgarten's 
catarrhal  drawl  that  he  jumped.  "'The  trouble 
with  Rose  is  that  she's  a  star,  but  she's  just  so 
much  of  a  star  and  she'll  never  be  any  more.' " 

"Here!"  exclaimed  Stiles.  "You  wanted  to 
know  what  punch  is.  That's  punch." 

"A  profound  truth  expressed  in  a  piquant  man- 
ner?" 

"Not  what  he  said,  but  what  you  said." 

"So  that  was  what  he  said,  was  it?"  the  girl 
persisted. 

"How  did  you  know?" 

"He's  said  it  before,"  replied  Rose,  indiffer- 
ently. 

"You  don't  seem  to  mind,"  Stiles  suggested. 

"What  good  would  it  do?"  replied  the  girl, 
wearily.  "It's  the  truth." 

They  had  come  to  a  crossroad  and  stopped  in- 
stinctively. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  269 

"I  wonder  where  this  leads  to?"  asked  Stiles. 
"Shall  we  try  it?" 

Matters  like  that  never  seemed  to  be,  to  Rose, 
worth  any  words,  and  in  silence  they  turned,  hand 
in  hand,  to  walk  down  the  side  road.  Far  ahead, 
a  single  light  gleamed  on  a  hillside. 

"I  have  a  suspicion,"  said  Stiles,  "that  that  is 
the  house  of  young  Master  Pullar,  Esquire.  I'm 
not  sure." 

"Charlie  could  probably  tell  you,"  replied  Rose, 
curtly. 

"He  probably  could." 

They  walked  on  listlessly,  Rose,  as  usual,  seem- 
ing to  think  of  things  far  away. 

"Well,  what  am  I  going  to  do  about  it?"  she 
demanded  at  last. 

"About  what?" 

"About  getting  so  far  and  no  farther?" 

"Do  you  want  to  go  farther?"  asked  Stiles. 

"Of  course." 

"You  are  sure?" 

"Ye-es,"  replied  the  girl,  hesitating  as  she  un- 
derstood that  he  meant  sure  to  the  point  of  ruth- 
lessness.  ' '  Yes/ '  she  amended,  firmly, ' '  I  am  sure. ' ' 

"You  must  be,"  said  Stiles.  "That  is  the  first 
thing." 

"What  next?"  demanded  the  girl.  "It's  like 
punch,"  she  went  on  without  waiting  for  his  an- 
swer. "It's  something  you  know  when  you  see  it, 
but  you  can't  tell  what  it  is.  That's  what  I  sup- 
pose I  haven't  got." 


270  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"I  knew  a  writer  once,"  replied  Stiles.  "He  is  a 
very  well-known  writer  now,  but  he  was  nobody 
then,  nobody  at  all.  I  suppose  in  my  line  I  was 
better  known  than  he  was.  That  was  years  ago. 
I  had  been  writing  a  little,  but  was  giving  it  up. 
He  asked  me  why,  one  night,  and  I  told  him.  At 
the  time  it  seemed  rather  noble  of  me  to  say  it.  I 
told  him,  'I  simply  haven't  got  the  spark.'  'Do 
you  really  believe  that?'  he  asked.  'I  do,'  I  re- 
plied, and,  crude,  foolish  little  cub  reporter  that 
he  was  at  the  time,  he  looked  across  the  table  and 
said,  'If  I  could  say  that  of  myself  and  really 
believe  it,  I  would  go  and  blow  my  brains  out !' " 

"Good  for  him!"  exclaimed  Rose. 

"Then  good  for  you!"  responded  Stiles.  "You 
feel  the  way  he  did." 

"I  suppose  so,"  answered  the  girl,  but  with  less 
assurance  when  it  was  applied  to  her  own  case. 
As  she  naturally  would,  she  translated  everything 
into  terms  of  her  own  profession.  "I  know  I  have 
a  decent  voice — not  grand  opera,  of  course,  but 
good  enough  for  musical  comedy.  I  know  I  can 
dance.  That's  what  makes  me  so  mad.  I  know 
some  girls  who  are  supposed  to  be  wonderful  dan- 
cers who  are  just  pure  faking.  They  don't  fool 
people  behind,  of  course,  but  they  fool  the  public. 
There  are  some  steps  that  any  one  can  do  that  look 
fine  from  in  front,  but  they're  not  the  real  thing. 
What  else  did  Stuffy  tell  you?" 

This  time  it  was  Stiles's  chance  to  imitate,  but 
he  knew  that  he  would  be  pathetic  at  it  and  wisely 


CRATER'S   GOLD  271 

did  not  try.  "He  said  that  you  had  a  good  voice 
and  could  dance  well  and  that  the  people  in  the 
profession  knew  what  you  were  worth,  'Then  along 
comes  a  little  chit  with  a  solid  ivory  dome  who 
can't  dance  and  can't  sing  and  draws  down  five 
hundred  a  week  and  fame." 

"Of  course  they're  not  all  like  that,"  supplied 
Rose,  charitably.  "Some  of  them  deserve  it  and 
no  one  is  gladder  than  I  am  to  see  them  get  it." 

"Elsie  Pair?"  suggested  Stiles.  It  was  one  name 
that  he  did  know. 

"Elsie  Fair  is  a  genius!"  responded  Rose,  em- 
phatically. Then,  in  the  insistent,  impetuous  way 
that  seemed  to  have  become  a  habit  with  her  when 
talking  to  Stiles,  she  demanded,  "What  is  genius?" 

Stiles  saw  that  it  would  be  no  use  to  disclaim 
authority  on  any  subject  on  earth.  In  the  miseries 
of  his  own  sad  case,  he  had  spent  some  thought  on 
the  subject  of  genius,  but  his  deductions  would 
hardly  be  tactful  now.  He  did  not  reply,  but  Rose 
would  not  let  him  escape. 

"Come  on,  now,  out  with  it,"  she  insisted. 

"Well,"  he  said,  evasively,  "Doctor  Johnson 
said  that  genius  was  broad  mental  powers  applied 
in  a  specialized  direction.  He  ought  to  know. 
He  wrote  a  dictionary." 

Rose,  however,  cared  little  for  Doctor  Johnson. 
She  had  a  more  modern  authority.  "What  do  you 
say  that  it  is?" 

Thus  cornered,  Stiles  had  either  to  lie  or  be 
silent.  He  chose  to  be  silent,  but,  with  that  almost 


272  CRATER'S    GOLD 

marvelous  intuition  that  the  girl  sometimes  dis- 
played, she  broke  in,  in  answer  to  her  own  ques- 
tion: 

"Brains?" 

"I  think  you've  said  it,"  replied  Stiles,  quietly, 
and  he  waited  fearfully. 

"My!  What  an  awful  predicament  that  leaves 
me  in!"  suggested  the  girl,  ruefully.  "I  suppose 
that  means  that  I  haven't  any  brains." 

"I  suppose  it  does,"  replied  Stiles,  solemnly,  but 
the  girl  was  more  solemn  than  he  was. 

"Do  you  really  think  that?"  she  asked. 

"Of  course  not,"  replied  Stiles.  "Do  you  think 
that  I  would  say  it  if  I  did?"  Suddenly  he  saw  the 
way  clear  before  him.  "You  forget  what  Doctor 
Johnson  said, ' '  he  suggested .  ' '  He  said  that  genius 
was  mental  powers  applied  in  some  special  direc- 
tion. Have  you  applied  your  brains  to  your 
work?" 

"I've  been  at  it  all  my  life,"  answered  Rose. 

"Mrs.  Fields  has  been  keeping  house  all  her 
life,"  argued  Stiles.  "She  seems  to  have  brains  of 
a  sort.  If  she  had  applied  them,  who  knows?  By 
this  time  she  might  have  been  head  housekeeper 
at  the  Biltmore." 

In  his  lighter  moments,  Rose  had  no  use  for 
Stiles  at  all.  She  was  not  even  listening. 

"But  look, ' '  she  said.  ' ' Everybody  calls  Charlie 
Eksberger  a  genius,  and  yet,  to  hear  him  talk,  you 
wouldn't  think  that  he  had  any  brains  at  all." 

Stiles  was  about  to  point  out  that  being  called 


CRATER'S   GOLD  273 

a  genius  was  not  the  same  thing  as  being  one,  but 
then  it  occurred  to  him  that,  after  all,  somebody 
must  decide  who  was  a  genius  and  who  was  not, 
so  why  not  the  world  in  general? 

"Is  he  really  a  big  man?"  he  asked,  quietly. 

"Yes,  he  is,"  answered  Rose,  emphatically, 
"one  of  the  biggest.  It's  hard  to  believe,  isn't  it? 
I  know  how  he  appears  to  you,  and  Heaven  knows 
how  he  appears  to  Queen  Victoria  and  those  peo- 
ple. Don't  you  suppose  that  we  see  what  he  is 
just  as  well  as  you  do?  Only  we're  used  to  him. 
Even  Stuffy  says  that  he  is  a  rotten  business  man, 
that  he  puts  on  a  show  so  lavishly  that  even  if  he 
plays  to  capacity,  he  still  loses  money.  And 
Charlie  answers  that  if  he  didn't  put  it  on  lavishly, 
it  wouldn't  be  a  success.  So  there  you  are !  Stuffy 
thinks  that  his  partner  is  a  crook,  but  the  fact 
remains  that  people  had  rather  work  for  them  than 
for  any  one  else,  and  the  fact  remains  that  they 
have  had  one  success  after  another.  Why,  if  you 
think  that  Charlie  Eksberger  is  crude,  now,  you 
ought  to  have  seen  him  when  I  first  knew  him. 
He  used  to  eat  with  his  knife.  He  honestly  did. 
He  used  to  take  a  piece  of  bread  and  clean  up 
the  gravy  on  his  plate  with  it.  I  was  actually 
ashamed  to  go  into  a  restaurant  with  him.  He 
used  to  wear  neckties  marvelous  with  still-life 
and  drawn  through  a  big  diamond  ring." 

"He  doesn't  wear  them  now,"  suggested  Stiles. 

"No,  he  doesn't,"  affirmed  Rose. 

"Well,  isn't  your  answer  there?" 


274  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"Go  on,"  urged  Rose.  "I  know  you've  got 
something  to  say." 

Stiles  had.  The  case  of  Eksberger  had  been  up- 
setting all  his  theories  for  the  past  two  days. 

"Eksberger,"  he  began,  "has  one  of  the  surest 
signs  of  genius — an  insatiable  curiosity." 

"You're  hedging  now,"  retorted  Rose.  "You 
said  genius  was  brains." 

"No,  I'm  not,"  replied  Stiles.  "Real  curiosity 
shows  an  irrepressible  brain.  How  long  has  Eks- 
berger been  a  producer?" 

"Seven  or  eight  years." 

"And  about  the  time  that  he  began  to  go  up  in 
the  world  he  began  to  regard  his  fork  with  shy 
wonder?" 

"He  ate  with  his  knife  for  a  long  time  after 
that,"  replied  Rose,  with  her  usual  passion  for 
exactness. 

"To  learn  not  to  do  that,"  explained  Stiles, 
' '  takes  some  time.  Other  things — history,  and  lit- 
erature, and  such,  come  more  quickly.  In  two  days 
he  has  learned  more  about  my  place  than  I  had 
learned  in  three  weeks  or  would  have  learned  in 
six  more.  He  had  only  to  see  one  old  document 
to  want  to  know  all  about  American  history.  He 
has  seen  Queen  Victoria  and  is  fired  with  desire  to 
be  a  country  gentleman.  He  asked  about  Bald 
Mountain  and  learned  all  about  the  stage-coach 
industry.  I've  been  in  terror  all  day  for  fear  that 
some  one  would  mention  logarithms." 

' '  Oh  dear !"  sighed  Rose.  ' '  I  know  it's  all  wrong, 


CRATER'S   GOLD  275 

but  you  make  it  sound  right.  And  how  does  that 
help  me?  I  don't  eat  with  my  knife." 

"That's  probably  the  trouble,"  suggested  Stiles. 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

"That  cub  reporter  that  I  told  you  about,"  re- 
plied Stiles,  "the  one  that  became  a  famous  writer, 
came  from  a  Western  college  with  a  name  so  funny 
that  he  was  ashamed  to  say  it — Starbright  Uni- 
versity, I  think  it  was,  or  else  that  was  what  the 
boys  used  to  call  it  when  they  joked  him  about  it. 
He  never  had  seen  New  York  until  he  came  to 
work  on  the  Sun.  Before  that  he  had  worked  on  a 
country  paper  where  I  presume  the  reporters  had 
to  set  type,  where  people  'severed  their  connection ' 
whenever  they  got  fired.  He  actually  brought  in 
an  item  to  the  Sun  one  day  to  the  effect  that  the 
clerk  of  the  Jefferson  Market  Police  Court  was  'on 
the  sick  list.'  Journalistically  speaking,  he  ate 
with  his  knife.  His  first  year  in  New  York  he 
wrote  up  the  real-estate  transfers  and  acted  as  if 
he  loved  it.  When  he  came  to  New  York  he  saw 
the  huge  city  and  said,  'My  goodness!  If  I  am 
ever  going  to  conquer  this  terrible  fortress  I  must 
set  right  to  work  and  learn  everything  in  it." 

Stiles  broke  off  with  a  laugh.  "Good  Heavens! 
I  am  talking  like  the  'How  to  Succeed'  articles  in 
the  magazines." 

' '  But  I  like  to  read  those  better  than  the  stories," 
protested  Rose.  "Aren't  they  right?" 

"Yes,  damn  them!"  replied  Stiles. 

"But  how  about  this  boy?   I  like  him." 


276  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Well,  he  succeeded." 

"Oh,"  answered  Rose. 

They  walked  a  moment  in  silence  and  then 
turned. 

"How  did  you  come  to  go  on  the  stage?"  asked 
Stiles  at  last. 

"Born  on  it,"  replied  Rose.  "I  played  in  'The 
Fatal  Wedding'  when  I  was  six  years  old.  My 
mother  was  a  character  actress,  my  father  was  a 
producer — not  the  way  Charlie  is.  He  staged 
musical  shows  for  other  people.  They  called  them 
just  plain  stage-managers  then." 

"This  is  personal,"  said  Stiles,  "but  if  you  come 
to  a  doctor  you  have  got  to  give  all  the  facts  in 
the  case.  You  really  never  knew  what  struggle 
was,  then?" 

"No,  not  really.  Father  was  pretty  well  known. 
He  always  had  plenty  to  do,  although  they  didn't 
pay  as  much  for  his  kind  of  work  as  they  do  now, 
except  just  toward  the  last.  He  was  just  beginning 
to  make  big  money  when  he  died.  Mother  died 
when  I  was  quite  young.  We  never  had  a  real 
home,  but  I  went  to  school — some.  I  went  to 
England  one  season  for  'The  Fatal  Wedding'  and 
they  traveled  a  schoolmaster  just  for  the  children 
in  the  company.  The  law  made  them.  When  I 
was  sixteen  I  was  making  good  money  myself. 
Father  saw  to  that." 

"That's  what  I  was  getting  at,"  said  Stiles, 
eagerly.  Then  he  stopped  short. 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  Rose. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  277 

"The  perfect  asininity  of  me  playing  the  doc- 
tor," he  replied. 

"I  like  it,"  replied  Rose.    "You're  doing  well." 

"All  right,  then,"  resumed  Stiles.  "What  I  was 
getting  at  was  this:  Did  the  stage  ever  really 
have  any  romance,  any  mystery,  for  you?" 

"That's  hard  to  say,"  confessed  the  girl.  "No 
mystery  surely.  I  can  remember  nights  when  I  was 
a  child,  riding  to  the  theater  in  the  bus  and 
seeing  the  people  walking  along  the  street  and  say- 
ing to  myself,  'Just  think,  those  lucky  people 
don't  have  to  go  to  the  theater.'  I  used  to  get 
awfully  sleepy  sometimes.  But  of  course,  on  the 
other  hand,  no  one  who  has  ever  been  on  the  stage 
would  ever  do  anything  else." 

"Not  even  keep  house  for  a  cowboy?"  suggested 
Stiles. 

"It  depends  on  the  cowboy,"  replied  the  girl. 
"My  first  real  parts  were  in  father's  companies. 
I'd  rather  have  been  in  any  one  else's.  He 
used  to  make  me  work  all  day  with  the  others 
and  then  work  hours  early  in  the  morning  by 
myself." 

"Ah!"  exclaimed  Stiles.  "Now  we've  got  it. 
And  to  this  day,  when  you  rehearse  a  part,  you 
see  your  father  standing  the  other  side  of  the 
footlights,  and  every  step  you  take  with  your  feet 
and  every  gesture  you  make  with  your  hand  you 
hesitate,  half  expecting  to  hear  his  voice  coming 
over  to  tell  you  it's  all  wrong." 

The  girl  stopped  dead  in  the  road  and  pulled 


278  CRATER'S    GOLD 

him  facing  her.  "Are  you  a  mind-reader?"  sh& 
demanded,  "or  what?" 

"I'm  the  latter,"  laughed  Stiles.  "No,  I'll  tell 
you  how  I  knew.  My  father  was  an  editor,  editor 
of  a  grand  old  weekly,  so  grand  that  if  they  found 
that  a  personal  note  had  crept  into  it,  they  used 
to  send  out  and  stop  the  presses.  The  cover  looked 
like  the  cover  of  the  Farmers'  Almanac  without 
the  crabs  and  fishes.  To  be  an  editor,  a  man  had 
to  have  known  Edgar  Allan  Poe  or  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  or  Junius  Brutus  Booth.  Any  one 
modern  like  James  Russell  Lowell  or  Joseph  Jef- 
ferson wouldn't  do  at  all.  Everybody  knew  them. 
If  a  man  had  known  all  three  they  made  him 
editor-in-chief.  Who  ever  read  the  magazine,  no- 
body knows,  but  it  came  out  every  week.  Probably 
nobody  thought  to  stop  it,  for  that  wasn't  its 
chief  purpose  at  all — to  come  out.  Its  chief  pur- 
pose was  to  furnish  a  place  where  all  the  men  in 
New  York  City  who  had  known  any  one  of  those — 
Poe,  Hawthorne,  or  the  elder  Booth — could  get 
together  and  gaze  on  men  who  had  known  two  of 
them  or  had  known  all  three. 

"Thus  was  my  childhood.  My  father  retired 
when  I  was  ten  or  twelve  and  we  moved  to  Boston 
— you  might  have  guessed  it — and  there  he  lived  it 
over  every  night  at  the  dinner-table.  So,  instead 
of  going  to  Starbright  University  and  becoming 
famous,  I  went  to  Harvard  and  became  the  son  of 
Basil  Folkes  Stiles.  I  was  still  the  son  of  Basil 
Folkes  Stiles  when  I  came  to  New  York  to  work 


CRATER'S    GOLD  279 

on  a  newspaper.  Old  gentlemen  used  to  come  and 
stand  behind  my  desk  and  whisper  that  I  was." 

"In  other  words — "  began  Rose. 

"In  other  words,"  interrupted  Stiles,  "for  the 
first  five  years  I  was  the  most  intolerable  little 
prig  you  ever  knew.  Then  all  the  men  who  had 
ever  known  Basil  Folkes  Stiles  or  had  ever  heard 
of  him,  died,  and  I  gradually  woke  up." 

"What  did  you  do  then?"  asked  Rose. 

"I  wrote  one  or  two  stories  in  the  style  of 
Hawthorne's,  found  that  they  weren't  as  good  as 
Hawthorne's,  and  quit." 

"What  did  you  do  then?"  asked  Rose.  Like 
the  boy  in  the  fable,  she  always  was  eager  to  know 
what  became  of  the  squirrel. 

"Then  I  sat  in  clubs  and  grew  bitter  about  the 
decadence  of  art — all  art — books,  painting,  music. 
There  were  others  doing  it,  too.  If  I  remember 
correctly,  we  even  asked  each  other,  'What  is  the 
Matter  With  the  American  Theatre?' — 'theatre' 
with  an  r-e." 

"Well,  what  was  the  matter  with  it?"  asked 
Rose. 

"We  differed  about  that,"  confessed  Stiles. 
"Anyway  it  pulled  through." 

"Next?"  persisted  Rose. 

"Oh,  by  the  time  I  got  over  that  phase  I  was 
able  to  earn  a  comfortable  living  reviewing  books 
by  the  cub  reporter  from  Starbright  University." 

"Are  they  good  books?"  asked  Rose. 

"Fearful,"  replied  Stiles. 

J.«7 


28o  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"And  then?" 

"Then  I  came  up  here  in  the  backwoods  and 
saw  New  York  City  for  the  first  time  in  thirty- 
eight  years." 

"You  don't  look  as  old  as  that." 

"Well,  lam." 

The  girl  pondered  it.  It  seemed  to  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  her  plans. 

' '  But  you  still  haven't  told  me  what  I  am  to  do, ' ' 
she  insisted. 

"Baumgarten  says  that  you  ought  to  marry." 

"Well,  I  could  do  that,  too,  but  I  mean  about 
my  work." 

Stiles  thought  it  over  at  some  length. 

"If  you  see  what  I  mean — "  he  began.  "You 
say  that  you  seem  to  get  just  so  far  and  no  farther. 
Is  it  possible  that  you  are  still  playing  'The  Fatal 
Wedding'?" 

Rose  was  silent  so  long  that  he  could  not  decide 
whether  she  understood  him  or  not.  "It  may 
be,"  she  said  at  last,  "but  how  am  I  to  change?" 

They  had  reached  the  main  road  again  and 
Stiles  stood  still  in  his  earnestness.  The  girl 
stopped,  too,  watching  him  curiously. 

"If  I  had  known  you  fifteen  years  ago,"  he  said, 
"and  Eksberger  and  Baumgarten,  I  might  have 
written  real  stories." 

"And  if  I  had  known  you,"  asked  Rose,  mis- 
chievously, "I  might  have  been  able  to  act?" 

"No,"  began  Stiles,  deprecatingly,  and  then,  in 
his  real  sincerity,  he  stopped  himself.  "Hang 


CRATER'S    GOLD  281 

it!  Why  shouldn't  I  say  it?  Yes,  you  might; 
although  I  wasn't  thinking  of  myself.  I  was  think- 
ing of  the  judge  and  Queen  Victoria  and  Mrs. 
Fields,  and  of  Rodney  the  coachman,  and  of  Solo- 
mon Crater,  late  deceased,  and  of  all  the  queer 
persons  who  make  us  realize  what  a  tremendous 
amount  of  living  has  been  done  first  and  last. 

"Here's  what  I  mean,"  he  went  on,  fiercely. 
"For  fifteen  years  I  tried  to  write  with  my  father's 
pen,  write  like  the  ghost  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
For  fifteen  years  you  have  tried  to  act  for  your 
father  the  other  side  of  the  footlights — act  like  the 
ghost  of  'The  Fatal  Wedding.'  It  is  too  late  now 
for  me  to  write  for  Eksberger  and  Baumgarten — • 
and,  besides,  to  hell  with  them! — but  it  is  not  too 
late  for  you  to  begin  acting  as  if  you  saw  the  old 
judge  the  other  side  of  the  footlights  ready  to 
squint  his  eyes  and  chuckle  when  you  really  said 
something,  as  if  you  saw  Queen  Victoria  ready  to 
patronize  you  and  make  you  mad  with  her  affec- 
tations!" 

"Cheers  and  tumult.  But  why  to  hell  with 
Eksberger?"  came  a  sudden  voice  from  the  dark- 
ness. 

Rose  clutched  Stiles's  arm  and  then  she  relaxed. 
' '  Charlie,  you  scared  me !  Where  in  the  world  have 
you  been?" 

With  a  laugh,  Eksberger  walked  out  of  the  dark- 
ness, coming  from  the  direction  of  the  town,  Baum- 
garten a  pace  behind  him. 

"Where  have  you  been?  That's  what  I  want  to 


282  CRATER'S    GOLD 

know,"  he  retorted.  "And  why,  Stiles,  this  coarse 
and  vulgar  language  at  my  expense?" 

"Because  you're  successful,"  replied  Stiles.  "I 
have  just  been  telling  Miss  Fuller  my  own  sad 
fate  as  a  writer." 

"Ever  write  plays?"  asked  Eksberger,  suddenly 
interested. 

' '  One, ' '  Stiles  admitted. 

"You  never  even  told  me  that,"  interjected 
Rose. 

"It's  not  a  thing  one  confesses,"  replied  Stiles. 

"You  know,  I  thought  you  were  a  writer.  I 
mean  a  real  writer,"  said  Eksberger.  "You  talk 
like  one.  You  can  spot  'em  every  time." 

He  did  not  seem  in  the  least  upset  by  what  he 
had  overheard. 

"You  mustn't  let  that  bother  you,"  he  went  on, 
kindly  enough.  "A  play's  the  hardest  thing  in  the 
world  to  write.  A  book  or  poetry  or  things  like 
that  are  nothing  to  it.  What  you  got  to  have  is 
technique." 

"And  punch?"  suggested  Rose. 

"That's  what  we  call  it,"  replied  Eksberger, 
"but  perhaps  Stiles  wouldn't  know  just  what  that 
means. 

"Stiles,"  he  went  on,  eagerly  —  for,  as  all  un- 
successful men  are  interested  in  success  so  are 
all  successful  men  interested  in  failure — "Stiles, 
let  me  see  some  of  your  work  some  time.  Lindsey 
Ray  was  a  fellow  just  like  you  when  he  wrote  'The 
Woman  Sins,'  and  you  know  what  that  made.  An 


CRATER'S    GOLD  283 

author  comes  to  me  with  a  play  and  I  tell  him, 
'Here,  that  thing's  no  good!'  But  possibly  I  see 
some  one  little  thing  in  it,  something  he  never  saw 
at  all,  and  we  rip  it  up  and  write  it  over  and,  the 
first  thing  you  know,  we've  got  a  play.  What  you 
ought  to  have,  Stiles,  is  an  idea." 

"Well,  maybe  he's  got  one.  You  never  can  tell," 
suggested  Baumgarten.  "Suppose  we  continue 
this  discussion  somewhere  else  except  in  the  middle 
of  the  road." 

Rose,  however,  was  looking  from  one  to  the 
other.  "Where  have  you  people  been?"  she  de- 
manded. 

"I'll  give  you  three  guesses,"  said  Eksberger. 

"To  the  movies?" 

"Correct!    Number  Seven  wins  the  oil-stove!" 

"I  didn't  know  there  were  any  movies  in  town," 
said  Stiles. 

"I  don't  believe  you  even  know  there's  a  post- 
office,"  retorted  Eksberger.  "What's  the  matter, 
Rose?" 

"I  was  thinking,"  replied  Rose,  convulsed, 
" — you  two  see  a  show  every  night  of  your 
lives  in  New  York,  and  when  you  come  up  here 
in  the  country  all  you  can  think  of  to  do  is  to 
go  and  see  some  two-hundred-and-fiftieth-run 
movies." 

"They  weren't  so  bad,"  replied  Eksberger. 
"Your  friends  the  Pullars  were  there,  Stiles,  and 
quite  a  lot  of  people  in  evening  clothes.  Mostly,  of 
course,  they  were  yaps." 


284  CRATER'S   GOLD 

Baumgarten  chuckled.  "Ask  him  what  else 
happened." 

"You  keep  still,  Stuffy,"  commanded  Eksberger. 
"Let's  go  on." 

Rose,  however,  did  not  move.  "What  did  hap- 
pen, Stuffy?"  she  asked. 

"Ask  him,"  repeated  Baumgarten. 

"Come  on,  Charlie,"  persisted  Rose.  "What 
happened?" 

"Nothing,"  insisted  Eksberger.  "What  you 
waiting  for?" 

"Charlie,"  said  Rose,  with  dawning  suspicion, 
' '  did  you  make  a  speech  ?" 

Baumgarten  burst  into  loud  guffaws. 

"Well,"  Eksberger  admitted,  "I  did  tell  'em  a 
few  things.  Course  they  knew  I  was  there,  any- 
way." 

"Yes  they  did,"  said  Baumgarten,  sarcastically, 
"after  you  had  gone  up  to  the  box-office  and  told 
them  who  you  were,  and  even  then  they  weren't 
quite  sure." 

"They  stamped  and  whistled  when  I  got  up," 
retorted  Eksberger. 

"They'd  have  done  that  if  any  one's  chair  had 
broken  down,"  replied  Baumgarten. 

' '  What  did  you  say,  Charlie  ? ' '  asked  Rose.  ' '  Did 
you  tell  them  that  the  motion  picture  was  still  in 
its  infancy?" 

"No,"  answered  Eksberger,  quite  seriously.  "I 
pointed  out  to  them  that  people  in  thousands  of 
little  towns  just  like  this,  all  over  the  United 


CRATER'S    GOLD  285 

States,  were  watching  pictures  to-night.  I  showed 
them  how  drama  had  once  been  the  art  of  the  rich 
man,  but  that  now  the  motion  picture  was  bring- 
ing drama  right  home  to  the  people." 

"How  did  Queen  Victoria  like  that?"  asked 
Stiles. 

"Who's  Queen  Victoria?"  asked  Eksberger. 

"Mrs.  Pullar." 

"Well,  I  wasn't  talking  to  those  people  then," 
explained  Eksberger.  "I  was  talking  to  the  yaps, 
but  later  I  said  that  I  already  had  made  several 
friends  in  town  and  I  knew  that  they  felt  the  same 
way  that  I  did  about  it.  Then  I  kidded  them  a 
little  and  said  that  I  had  half  a  mind  to  buy  a 
place  here  myself — and  the  more  I  think  of  it  the 
more  I  have,  Stiles — and  that  if  I  did  come  here 
for  a  month  or  two  in  the  summer  we  all  might  be 
able  to  get  together  and  put  on  some  stuff  here, 
from  time  to  time,  that  would  put  the  place  right 
on  the  map.  I  never  thought  of  it  until  that  mo- 
ment, but  I  happened  to  think  of  the  annual 
masquerade  dance  that  the  movie  colonies  give  at 
different  places  out  in  California,  how  they  become 
part  of  the  life  of  those  little  towns,  and  I  said  that 
there  was  no  reason  why  we  couldn't  stage  some- 
thing of  the  same  sort  right  here.  All  it  needed 
was  a  little  pep  and  some  one  who  knew  the  ropes 
to  start  things  going." 

"Did  the  Pullars  cheer?"  asked  Rose. 

"Well,  they'd  left  by  that  time,"  said  Eksberger, 
"but  some  of  their  friends  were  still  there  and,  be- 


286  CRATER'S    GOLD 

lieve  me  or  not,  just  as  you  want  to,  but  they 
listened  to  every  word  I  said — earnestly,  too." 

"Come  on,  come  on,"  said  Baumgarten,  impa- 
tiently, and  the  whole  group  moved  toward  the 
house. 

Eksberger  was  apparently  reviewing  in  his  mind 
his  triumph  of  the  evening,  for  he  said  nothing  for 
several  hundred  yards. 

"Of  course  I  never  thought  of  that  idea,  Stiles," 
he  began  again  at  last  as  if  he  had  not  been  inter- 
rupted. "It  just  came  to  me  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  but  people  who  never  see  good  pictures 
get  a  wrong  idea  of  them  entirely.  I  generally  do 
what  I  say  I'll  do,  and,  you  know,  I  have  half  a 
mind  to  see  Pullar  in  the  morning  and  see  whether 
it  wouldn't  be  possible  to  get  up  a  subscription-list 
— I'd  start  it  myself  for  fifty  or  a  hundred — and 
really  give  these  people  something  to  make  them 
sit  up  and  take  notice." 

"That's  very  generous,"  suggested  Stiles,  "but 
wouldn't  they  take  more  interest  in  it  if  you  let 
Pullar  and  his  friends  start  it  themselves?" 

"If  they  ever  thought  of  it,"  replied  Eksberger, 
"but  they  never  have  and  they  never  will.  They've 
lived  here  for  centuries  and  they've  never  thought 
of  it  yet.  It  takes  an  outsider  to  come  into  a  place 
like  this  and  start  things  moving.  That's  another 
thing  I  told  them." 

Alone  in  the  group,  Baumgarten  seemed  to  have 
no  wish  to  hear  about  the  speech  of  the  evening. 
He  had  walked  ahead  so  swiftly  that  he  was  out 


CRATER'S    GOLD  287 

of  sight  in  the  darkness  and  Eksberger  called  to 
him: 

"Stuffy,  you  know  this  isn't  a  foot-race." 

No  answer  came  from  the  darkness  and  Eks- 
berger called  again,  "Stuffy!" 

Still  no  answer  came  for  a  moment,  and  then 
came  Baumgarten's  voice  in  mild  excitement: 

"Look  here,  Stiles,  is  this  your  ocean?" 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

"  AA  Y  gosh!     It's  somebody's  ocean  all  right, 
ATI  all  right!"  agreed  Eksberger  as,  a  pace  in 
advance  of  the  others,  he  reached  Baumgarten's 
side.     "Wait  a  moment.     I'll  light  a  match." 

"So  you've  got  one  now,  have  you?"  asked 
Baumgarten. 

"First  thing  I  looked  for  when  I  got  up-stairs," 
admitted  Eksberger. 

He  lit  the  match,  and  it  did  the  duty  that  even 
the  tiniest  flame  will  do  on  a  windless  night.  As 
far  ahead  as  its  faint  glow  would  reach  it  showed 
water — smooth  water  like  a  lake  in  the  ditches 
and  fields,  muddy  water,  in  snakelike  tricklets 
with  edges  of  dirty  bubbles,  curling  and  searching 
its  way  toward  their  feet  in  every  wheel-track 
and  hoof -print.  They  had  to  move  back  a  step 
to  avoid  it. 

Eksberger,  with  a  fine  show  of  prodigality,  lit 
another  match  as  soon  as  the  first  had  expired. 
"Water,  water  everywhere,'"  he  quoted. 
"And  not  a — '"  continued  Stiles,  but  Baum- 
garten interrupted  him. 

"Yes,  we  know  all  about  that,"  he  said,  gruffly. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  289 

Acting  as  guardian  to  these  irresponsible  children 
in  the  face  of  natural  phenomena  was  rapidly 
making  him  a  nervous  wreck.  "The  question  is, 
what  are  we  going  to  do  about  it?" 

"Ask  Stiles,"  suggested  Eksberger.  "It's  his 
flood." 

Baumgarten,  however,  paid  no  attention. 
Briefly,  with  the  rights  of  the  pioneer,  he  related 
the  facts  of  his  discovery.  Striding  along  the 
road,  ahead  of  the  others,  he  had  walked  into 
what  he  had  thought  was  a  puddle,  but,  jumping 
to  clear  it,  had  merely  jumped  into  deeper  water 
— up  to  his  ankles,  in  fact.  At  that  he  had  stopped 
and  called  for  directions. 

"Of  course  it  comes  from  the  mine,"  said  Stiles. 
"They  must  have  turned  on  the  water  at  the 
pond.  They  shut  it  off  to  allow  us  to  salvage 
the  car.  The  judge  said  that  the  mine  was  al- 
ready full  of  water." 

"He  didn't  have  to  tell  us  that,"  interrupted 
Eksberger.  "We  heard  it  ourselves — and  saw  it 
go  in." 

"And  then,  when  they  let  in  still  more  water," 
continued  Stiles,  regardless,  "it  must  have  been 
more  than  the  poor  mine  could  stand.  It  has 
spewed  it  out,  belched  it  forth,  as  our  lady  novelists 
say  when  they  wish  to  write  with  brute  masculine 
vigor." 

Eksberger  turned  in  mock  reproof.  "Stiles, 
your  language  is  getting  to  be  something  awful." 

Stiles  laughed,  for,  ever  since  his  impassioned 


290  CRATER'S    GOLD 

lecture  to  Rose,  it  was  true  that  his  mind  had 
been  running  in  a  sort  of  exalted  and  vicious 
rhythm. 

"Anyway,"  he  said,  in  gruffer  tones  to  prove 
his  sanity,  "the  house  is  safe.  You  can  see  the 
lights."  ' 

"Oh,  those  poor  cows!"  exclaimed  Rose,  at  the 
thought.  "Do  you  think  they're  drowned?" 

"Not  unless  water  can  run  uphill,"  replied 
Baumgarten.  "That  water  is  coming  out  of  the 
mine,  not  going  into  it.  If  the  water  had  reached 
to  where  they  are,  it  would  be  fifty  feet  over  our 
heads  where  we  stand  —  a  hundred,  for  that 
matter." 

Rose's  attitude  expressed  her  usual  distrust  of 
science,  but  she  said  no  more.  Eksberger,  the 
inquisitive,  started  to  walk  slowly  forward,  going 
as  far  as  he  could  on  the  dry  spots  between 
the  wheel-tracks.  Even  when  he  came  to  the 
edge  of  the  temporary  lake  itself  he  splashed  it 
daringly  with  his  foot.  He  saw  a  hummock  of 
sand  surrounded  entirely  by  water  and  leaped 
over  to  it,  but  when  he  stood  poised  for  further 
advance,  it  was  too  much  for  Rose. 

"Now,  Charlie,"  she  begged,  "don't  try  to 
swim  it." 

In  Baumgarten  all  sense  of  humor  was  dead. 

"Come  back  here,  Charlie,"  he  ordered,  curtly, 
and  strangely  Eksberger  did  it.  They  all,  in  fact, 
had  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat,  for,  as  if  the  water 
had  just  discovered  their  presence,  the  little 


CRATER'S   GOLD  291 

streamlets  suddenly  began  to  run  toward  them  as 
if  with  deliberate  venom.  The  party  was  chased 
back  a  full  dozen  feet,  at  which  the  streamlets, 
amused  at  having  shown  their  authority,  began 
to  content  themselves  with  describing  jig-saw  pat- 
terns among  the  hoof-prints. 

From  the  new  point  of  vantage  Eksberger  sur- 
veyed the  oncoming  flood. 

"I  wonder  what  we  ought  to  do,"  he  asked, 
musingly.  "Do  you  suppose  we  ought  to  stick 
our  finger  in  the  dyke  or  ought  we  to  run  and 
give  the  alarm  to  the  sleeping  city?" 

"We  ought  to  do  something,"  said  Baumgarten, 
gruffly.  "You  seem  to  think  this  thing  is  a  joke." 

"Well,  isn't  it,  in  a  way?"  retorted  Eksberger. 
"As  long  as  Fieldsie  is  safe  and  sound  I  think  it's 
awfully  funny." 

"Funny  as  a  crutch,"  answered  Baumgarten, 
bitterly.  "I  suppose  you'd  like  to  see  somebody 
get  drowned  in  it.  It  may  be  all  right  here  where 
it's  level,  but  suppose  somebody  in  a  car  was 
coming  fast  down  that  hill  on  the  other  side. 
That  would  be  a  fine  joke,  wouldn't  it?" 

"The  deuce!  I  never  thought  of  that,"  replied 
Eksberger,  suddenly  sobered. 

"Neither  did  I,"  confessed  Stiles. 

"Well,  we've  got  to  get  up  there  and  get  up 
there  quick,"  commanded  Baumgarten.  "Are 
there  any  other  roads,  Stiles?" 

"None  that  I  know  of." 

"Well,   that  doesn't  prove  that  there  aren't 


292  CRATER'S    GOLD 

any,"  suggested  Eksberger,  but  Baumgarten 
checked  him. 

"Come  on,  stop  your  talking.  We've  got  to  let 
somebody  know  about  this." 

He  turned  and  led  the  way  to  the  crossroads 
at  a  pace  which  made  the  others  almost  break 
into  a  run.  There  he  stopped  and  announced  his 
plan  of  campaign. 

"There  are  two  things  to  do,"  he  said.  "Go 
to  the  village  or  else  go  down  to  that  house  where 
that  light  is.  To  be  safe,  we'll  do  both." 

"Wait  a  minute,"  said  Eksberger.  "Here  comes 
a  car." 

In  the  distance,  from  the  direction  of  the  town, 
a  pin-point  of  light  was  rapidly  enlarging  into  a 
pair  of  headlights.  Eksberger  rushed  into  the 
middle  of  the  road  and  began  waving  his  arms. 

"I  bet  it's  Pullar,"  said  Stiles,  and  Pullar  it 
was.  With  a  creaking  of  brakes,  he  came  to  a 
stop  and  looked  out,  astonished.  Eksberger  did 
the  talking.  Pullar  heard  him  through  and  pon- 
dered a  moment. 

"The  quickest  thing,"  he  suggested,  at  last, 
"is  to  go  on  to  my  house  and  telephone  the  judge. 
He's  the  man  to  talk  to.  Jump  in." 

He  seemed  excited,  but  excited  in  a  capable, 
resourceful  way.  Just  to  see  him  take  charge  of 
the  case  took  a  load  from  the  shoulders  of  the 
others.  In  physical  moments  like  that  Pullar 
was  at  his  best.  "Jump  in,"  he  repeated. 

Pullar's  car  was  a  runabout,  just  such  a  run- 


CRATER'S    GOLD  293 

about  as  a  man  like  Pullar  would  drive,  tiny  in 
seating  capacity,  but  in  length  and  power  the  size 
of  a  locomotive.  It  had  no  windshield  and  must 
have  been  gray.  Rose  sat  in  the  seat  while  the 
others,  as  Eksberger  said,  proceeded  to  drape 
themselves  on  the  mudguards.  Pullar  stood  on 
the  throttle  and  the  wind  began  whishing  past. 

"Are  there  any  other  roads  to  get  up  there?" 
called  Baumgarten  from  where  he  half  sat  on 
the  floor. 

Bending  over  his  wheel,  his  eyes  squinted  at 
the  road,  Pullar  did  not  answer,  and  Rose  leaned 
down  to  Baumgarten. 

"He  didn't  hear  you,"  she  said,  and  Baumgar- 
ten was,  in  his  way,  enough  of  a  Pullar  not  to 
repeat  the  question.  In  much  less  than  a  minute 
Pullar  drew  up  in  the  gravel  driveway  before  his 
own  house. 

"Come  in,"  he  said,  "and  we'll  see  what's 
what." 

His  house,  as  seen  from  the  foot  of  the  steps, 
did  not  seem  a  large  one,  but  a  soft  red  light  in  a 
window  promised  a  certain  pretentiousness,  while 
the  hallway  they  entered,  with  polished  floors 
and  a  tiger-skin  rug,  was  rather  amazing. 

As  if  they  had  come  for  a  casual  call,  their 
host  showed  them  into  the  little  reception-room 
to  which  the  red-shaded  lamp  invited.  It  was 
not  an  unusual  room,  as  reception-rooms  go.  For 
the  modern  taste  there  might  have  been  just  a 
trifle  too  much  of  tapestry  on  the  wall,  a  trifle 


294  CRATER'S   GOLD 

too  much  of  brass  in  the  great  lamp  stand,  a 
trifle  too  much  of  crowding  among  the  mahogany 
chairs  and  tables,  but  a  deep,  soft  rug  gave  way 
under  foot  and,  after  two  days  of  the  old  Crater 
house,  it  conveyed  an  astonishing  sense  of  richness. 

Pullar,  calm  as  he  was,  did  not  let  hospitality 
delay  him.  ' '  If  you  will  wait  here  ?"  he  suggested, 
with  a  smile  and  half  a  bow,  and  was  gone.  At 
the  end  of  the  hall  they  heard  him  call  up  the  opera- 
tor in  his  usual  quiet  tones,  then  a  door  shut  and 
his  voice  was  cut  off. 

Eksberger  looked  around  at  the  room  with  ex- 
cited eyes. 

"Some  shack!"  he  exclaimed,  but  no  one  gave 
any  response,  least  of  all  Rose.  Even  in  view  of 
the  emergency,  she  could  not  seem  to  get  over 
a  feeling  of  being  an  intruder  in  that  house. 

"Why  don't  you  sit  down,  Rose?"  asked  Baum- 
garten,  gently.  "You're  all  wrought  up." 

"I'm  all  right,"  said  the  girl,  quietly,  but,  as 
a  concession  to  his  kindly  intent,  she  did  sit  stiffly 
on  the  edge  of  a  chair. 

Eksberger,  all  unconscious  of  anything  except 
immediate  impressions,  was  still  surveying  the 
room. 

"You'd  never  think  in  a  house  like  this  that  you 
were  'way  off  in  the  country,  would  you?"  he 
asked.  "This  just  shows  what  you  can  do, 
Stiles,  if  you  know  how  to  do.it.  When  I  have  a 
house  in  the  country,  I'm  going  to  have  one  just 
like  this." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  295 

Pullar  came  back  in  time  to  hear  his  last  words 
and  waited  for  him  to  finish. 

"It's  all  right,"  he  said,  with  a  smile.  "The 
judge  did  it  on  purpose." 

"On  purpose?"  exclaimed  Baumgarten. 

Pullar  nodded.  "He  says  that  the  water  is 
only  about  eighteen  inches  deep  in  the  road." 

"Eighteen  inches?"  demanded  Eksberger,  as 
if  it  were  a  personal  affront  to  his  private  flood. 
"Has  he  seen  it?" 

"No,"  explained  Pullar,  still  with  a  smile,  "but 
he  says  that  it  happened  before — in  the  reign  of 
Martin  Van  Buren  or  somebody.  The  water 
can't  run  anywhere  except  across  the  meadows 
and  on  down  into  Cranberry  River.  He  says  it 
will  all  be  gone  by  morning." 

"But  how  do  you  mean  he  did  it  on  purpose?" 
insisted  Eksberger. 

"He  had  to  have  the  gate  at  the  pond  opened 
sooner  or  later,"  explained  Pullar.  "The  water- 
rights  on  the  river  belong  to  the  power  company. 
If  it  didn't  run  some  time  we  wouldn't  have  any 
electric  lights.  Besides,  he  said  that  that  was  the 
quickest  way  to  get  the  water  out  of  the  mine. 
If  he  hadn't  done  that,  it  would  have  been 
leaking  out  and  making  the  roads  mushy  all 
summer." 

"But  isn't  it  dangerous?"  asked  Baumgarten. 

"Oh!"  recalled  Pullar.  "He  asked  me  to 
apologize  to  you  for  cutting  you  off.  He  said  he 

left  you  all  safe  at  home.     He's  stationed  a  man 
20 


296  CRATER'S    GOLD 

at  each  end  to  stop  traffic.  The  man  at  this  end 
must  have  fallen  asleep  at  his  post." 

"I  hope  the  one  at  the  other  end  hasn't,"  sug- 
gested Baumgarten.  He  could  still  not  get  over 
his  sense  of  responsibility.  "In  the  mean  time," 
he  added,  "how  are  we  ever  going  to  get  home?" 

"That's  simple,"  said  Pullar.  "I'll  run  you 
down  to  Lebanon  and  then  back  over  the  moun- 
tain. It's  only  seventeen  miles." 

"At  the  rate  we  came,"  replied  Eksberger, 
"that  will  take  us  just  seventeen  minutes." 

Pullar  laughed.  "There's  not  all  that  hurry, 
this  time.  I'll  take  the  big  car.  If  you'll  wait 
just  a  minute  my  wife  will  be  down." 

On  the  heels  of  her  husband's  words,  Mrs.  Pul- 
lar came  into  the  room.  She  was  dressed  in  a 
trailing  silk  that  seemed  to  be  half  negligee  and 
half  tea-gown  and,  with  her  own  background, 
one  had  to  confess  that  she  made  not  at  all  an 
unqueenly  figure.  The  moment  was  one  which 
Stiles  had  hoped  to  avoid,  but  Mrs.  Pullar,  al- 
though a  rigorous  lady,  was,  after  all,  a  lady. 
With  every  gesture  of  kindness  she  swept  up 
to  Rose  and  took  her  hand.  Her  husband 
gave,  briefly,  the  story.  She  listened  with  open 
eyes. 

"But  weren't  you  scared?"  she  asked,  turning 
again  to  Rose. 

Rose  admitted  that  she  had  been,  and  things 
went  more  smoothly. 

Eksberger  only  for  a  moment  had  allowed  the 


CRATER'S    GOLD  297 

picture  of  his  hostess  to  take  his  eyes  from  the 
room. 

"Mrs.  Pullar,"  he  said,  at  the  first  opportunity, 
"you've  got  a  beautiful  place." 

Mrs.  Pullar  smiled.  "Would  you  like  to  see 
it?"  she  asked. 

"Isn't  it  pretty  late?"  suggested  Stiles. 

"You  entertained  us  until  two  o'clock,"  she 
replied. 

She  turned  and  led  the  way  into  the  hall,  then 
into  the  little  breakfast-room.  It  was  finished  in 
quaint  Dutch  tiles,  while  regiments  of  copper  and 
pewter  mustered  themselves  on  the  sideboard. 
They  caught  Eksberger's  eye  at  once. 

"I  say!"  he  exclaimed;  "you  know  how  to 
live." 

His  hostess  nodded  an  acknowledgment  which 
was  not  without  humor  and  led  the  way  to  the 
back  of  the  house. 

"And  this,"  she  explained,  "is  where  Bobby 
lives  when  he's  too  cross  to  be  seen." 

The  room  was  a  little  den  with  big  leather 
chairs,  and  tobacco-jars  and  old,  faded  photo- 
graphs on  the  walls.  Stiles  looked  at  them  with 
a  pang  of  reminiscence — pictures  of  hockey  teams 
and  crews,  in  all  of  which  he  could  pick  out  Pul- 
lar's  own  face,  looking  hardly  more  boyish  than 
it  looked  now. 

"What  year  were  you?"  he  asked,  quietly. 

"'Ninety -nine,"  replied  Pullar.  "Were  you  a 
New  Haven  man,  too?" 


298  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Cambridge,"  said  Stiles. 

They  spoke  with  that  air  of  diffidence,  that 
curious  manner  of  shame  with  which  university 
men  do  allude  to  such  subjects,  but  Eksberger 
overheard  them  and  looked  strangely  from  one 
to  the  other. 

"In  eighteen  ninety-nine/*  he  began,  slowly, 
"I  was — "  But  his  tone  drifted  off.  The  sen- 
tence did  not  seem  to  be  as  important  as  he  had 
thought  at  first  that  it  was  going  to  be.  His  eye 
caught  sight  of  a  picture  of  hounds,  and  he  wel- 
comed the  diversion.  "Say,  Pullar,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "perhaps  you  can  tell  us.  What  do 
they  hunt  with  beagles?" 

"Rabbits,"  said  Pullar,  surprised.     "Why?" 

4 '  Nothing, ' '  replied  Eksberger.  ' '  I  just  wanted 
to  know." 

The  party  followed  its  hostess  back  into  the 
hall. 

"This,"  she  announced,  with  a  certain  air,  "is 
a  room  of  which  we  really  are  proud." 

What  she  actually  did  was  to  open  a  door  and 
switch  on  some  lights,  but  she  seemed  to  have 
raised  a  great  curtain,  for  the  room  which  was 
opened  before  them  was  positively  regal.  It  must 
have  been  sixty  feet  long  and  thirty  feet  high. 
A  grand  piano  in  the  far  corner  suggested  its 
character,  while  a  winding  staircase  gave  the 
idea  that  it  was  not  so  much  a  room  as  a  whole 
wing  of  the  house.  On  all  four  sides,  the  walls 
were  paneled,  while,  at  the  height  of  the  second 


CRATER'S   GOLD  299 

story,  a  balcony  ran  about  it — above  that  more 
panels.  It  glowed  with  soft,  indirect  lighting. 

The  whole  group  stared  at  it  with  wide-open 
eyes.  On  each  of  the  walls  was  a  single  painting. 

Stiles  looked  amazed  at  his  hostess. 

' '  Proud  ? "  he  exclaimed.  ' '  I  should  think  you'd 
be  positively  pompous." 

"We  don't  use  it  much,"  she  replied,  with  the 
same  air  of  deprecation  with  which  her  husband 
had  referred  to  his  college  pictures,  but  still  an 
amused  glint  of  pride  shone  in  her  eye.  Stiles 
could  well  forgive  it.  His  own  eye  was  caught 
by  one  of  the  paintings.  He  looked  again  at  his 
hostess  and  smiled.  She  returned  it  and  Stiles 
shook  his  head. 

"No,"  he  said,  slowly,  "I  don't  believe  it." 

He  half  expected  Eksberger  to  act  in  his  usual 
role,  but  Eksberger  was  looking  up  at  the  height 
of  the  walls  and  was  dumb.  Stiles  turned  to 
Rose  and  nodded  toward  the  painting. 

"You  read  about  those,"  he  said,  "but  you 
mustn't  believe  it,  because  there  is  no  such 
animal.  That  is  a  genuine  Claude  Lorraine." 

"It  belonged  to  my  father,"  explained  Mrs. 
Pullar. 

It  was  a  picture  of  which  it  needed  no  knowl- 
edge of  painting  to  see  the  splendor.  Pullar 
turned  on  its  own  hooded  light  and  a  golden 
flush  brought  out  its  rich,  tropic  splendor.  A  full 
three  minutes,  in  silence,  the  little  group  stood 
before  it,  drinking  in  the  pure  majesty  of  its  spaces 


300  CRATER'S   GOLD 

and  columns.  Mrs.  Pullar  broke  the  silence  at 
last. 

"I  suppose  it  is  very  rococo  now  to  love  Claude 
Lorraine.  People  talk  color." 

Stiles  shook  his  head.     "I  don't." 

At  last  Eksberger  spoke,  but  he  did  not  speak 
as  he  usually  spoke.  He  was  blinking  his  eyes 
with  excited  interest.  "How  do  you  mean,  talk 
color?" 

Mrs.  Pullar  hesitated,  then  turned  to  Stiles. 
"How  would  you  describe  it?" 

"Well,"  explained  Stiles,  "the  idea  seems  to 
be  that  if  you  paint  a  black  horse  on  one  half  of 
your  canvas,  and  a  white  horse  on  the  other,  the 
eye  will  see  a  calico  pony  standing  in  the  middle. 
It  may  be.  It  is  very  beautiful  sometimes — • 
morning  lights,  and  apple  blossoms  and  blue  mists 
— but  it  does  seem  as  if  the  artist  should  do  the 
work,  not  we.  Personally  I  prefer  pictures." 

Eksberger  looked  at  the  Claude  Lorraine  and 
drew  a  long  breath. 

"Well,  if  that  is  a  picture,"  he  said,  at  last, 
"so  do  I!" 

They  turned  back  into  the  hall  and  Pullar 
went  out  for  his  car.  There  was  little  said  on  the 
long  drive  home,  and  little  said  as  they  found 
their  way  into  the  house.  Baumgarten  was 
shown  his  room,  and  Stiles  went  about  his  busi- 
ness of  closing  up  for  the  night.  Just  as  he  had 
done  on  the  evening  before,  he  leaned  down  to 
turn  out  the  big  study  lamp,  then  again  he  looked 


CRATER'S    GOLD  301 

up  and  saw  Rose  at  his  side.  It  would  be  rather 
ridiculous,  however,  to  say  that  he  had  not  known 
she  was  there.  He  paused  a  moment,  leaving 
the  room  half  lighted. 

"You'd  better  find  your  way  to  the  stairs,"  he 
suggested,  "before  I  put  this  out."  But  the 
girl  did  not  move;  she  looked  up  at  him  mischiev- 
ously, and  he  suddenly  found  that  his  own  hands 
were  trembling.  He  looked  at  her  with  eyes  as 
bright  as  her  own. 

"I  mentioned  a  little  matter  this  afternoon — " 
he  suggested. 

A  step  sounded,  coming  down  the  stairway 
and,  guiltily,  they  sprang  apart.  Eksberger  came 
into  the  room.  His  voice  was  rather  husky,  and 
he  was  hanging  his  head. 

"By  the  way,  Stiles,"  he  said,  "I'd  rather 
you  didn't  say  anything  to  those  people  about  my 
scheme  for  the  movies.  It  might  not  be  the 
thing  after  all." 


CHAPTER  XXX 

HIS  promise  to  Eksberger  Stiles  kept  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  but  the  matter  was 
mentioned.  Pullar  mentioned  it  first.  Stiles 
found  him  at  ten  o'clock  on  the  following  morn- 
ing, seated  in  his  little  box  of  an  office  on  the 
village  street  amid  a  fine  show  of  business.  It 
being  Saturday,  he  explained  that  he  had  a  few 
things  to  get  off  before  the  noon  mail  and,  duti- 
fully, Stiles  sat  waiting  and  watched  him. 

There  was  something  amusing  in  seeing  Pullar 
there  at  his  desk,  his  tweed  knickerbockers,  his 
heavy  hands  and  his  wind-blown  cavalry-officer's 
face  appearing  all  wrong  among  the  litter  of  car- 
bon copies  and  ink-wells  and  scattered  papers. 
He  looked  like  an  over-serious  child  playing  at 
business — which  to  a  large  extent  was  what  he 
actually  was;  or,  better,  he  looked  to  Stiles  like 
one  of  those  pictures  in  animal  books  showing 
Big  Master  Dog,  dressed  up  in  a  collar  and  tie, 
at  work  in  his  shop. 

Pullar  signed  his  last  check  and  looked  up. 

"Well,  how  is  the  flood?" 

"It  has  all  disappeared,"  replied  Stiles.  "The 
judge  was  quite  right." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  303 

"The  judge  always  is,"  answered  Pullar,  quiet- 
ly. "In  fifteen  years  I  have  learned  that  much." 

He  paused  thoughtfully,  almost  wistfully,  and 
looked  out  of  the  window  as  if  the  judge  would 
furnish  food  for  an  endless  talk.  Stiles  wondered 
whether  Pullar  realized  that,  year  by  year,  almost 
week  by  week,  he  himself  was  becoming  a  Judge; 
but  he  had  little  hope  that  he  was  going  to  find 
out,  for  a  man  like  Pullar  is  the  most  disappointing 
thing  in  creation  for  intimacy. 

Pullar  must  have  had  dreams,  endless  dreams, 
as  he  looked  out  that  window.  Stiles  himself 
could  build  up  processions  of  pictures  just  as  he 
watched  him — historic,  Homeric  boat  races  on 
the  Thames  at  New  London,  self -suppressed,  well- 
bred,  triumphant  university  days  at  New  Haven, 
country-house  visits  with  skating  and  hockey  and 
undergraduate  hero-worship,  the  seemingly  brill- 
iant marriage  to  wealth — and  then  this!  What 
hopes,  disappointments,  humors,  ironies,  did  Pul- 
lar feel  now  at  the  thought  of  himself  with  all  of 
his  background  and  all  of  his  education  being 
found  thus  cooped  up  in  this  grotesque  box  of  a 
country  office,  fishing  and  motors  his  only  ex- 
citements, petty  transfers  of  land  his  sole  occu- 
pation? There  must  have  been  longings,  some 
wish  for  confession  stifled  under  that  firm,  hand- 
some face,  but  Stiles  knew  that  the  creed  of  such 
men  was  never  to  show  it. 

He  was  right.  Pullar  said  no  more  of  the 
judge. 


3o4  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Any  damage,"  he  asked,  "from  the  flood?" 

Stiles  smiled  at  the  question.  "The  grass  has 
a  shampooed  effect — lying  flat  with  the  white 
sides  showing  and,  when  I  came  down  this  morn- 
ing, the  roads  were  as  smooth  as  a  table,  not  a 
wheel-track  in  them.  There  may  be  a  fence  or 
two  gone." 

"Not  the  bridge?" 

"Not  the  bridge." 

It  was  all  pure  sparring  to  serve  until  Stiles 
should  choose  to  state  the  real  purpose  of  his 
visit.  He  chose  right  away. 

"Pullar,"  he  said,  "I'm  ready  to  sell." 

Pullar  showed  no  emotion  one  way  or  the  other 
and  Stiles  went  on.  "I  imagined  that  you  might 
feel,  perhaps,  a  little  hesitation  in  coming  to  see 
me  again." 

"I  did,"  confessed  Pullar.  "I  thought  I  had 
bothered  you  enough.  Of  course  I  will  have  to 
see  my  people." 

He  said  it  in  a  way  that  roused  in  Stiles  a 
little  resentment. 

"Of  course  you  don't  have  to  take  it,  you  know, 
if  you  don't  want  it." 

Pullar  raised  his  hand.  "Don't  worry.  We'll 
take  it  all  right.  That  was  not  what  I  meant. 
You  see,  it's  not  my  money." 

"I  see,"  said  Stiles,  and  he  did  see  all  that 
Pullar  meant  to  have  him.  Perhaps  that  was 
why  Pullar  himself  came  out  of  his  shell  just  a 
little.  He  looked  at  Stiles  and  smiled  faintly. 


CRATER'S    GOLD  305 

"Your  friend  made  quite  a  speech  last  night." 

"So  I  heard.    Was  he—?" 

"He  was  vigorous,"  supplied  Pullar,  "enthusias- 
tic." 

Stiles  smiled,  himself. 

"The  word  'pep,'  they  tell  me,  is  used  to  de- 
scribe the  manner." 

He  felt  at  the  moment  a  sudden  huge  impulse 
to  smash  straight  through  that  reserve,  to  exclaim, 
"Now  look  here,  Pullar,  what's  the  use  of  our 
being  snobs  and  asses?  Which  one  of  us  could 
have  done  a  tenth  of  what  that  fellow  has  done?" 
But,  among  the  others  of  life,  Stiles  had  met 
several  Pullars.  In  his  faint,  pedantic  way  he 
knew  that  he  was  a  bit  of  a  Pullar  himself.  To 
the  extent  of  being  a  Harvard  man  he  certainly 
was,  but,  facing  Pullar,  he  always  felt  a  little  pro- 
Eksberger,  just  as,  facing  Eksberger,  he  always  felt 
more  than  a  little  pro-Pullar.  Instead  of  follow- 
ing his  impulse  he  rose  to  his  feet.  "Well,  when- 
ever you  wish  to  talk  about  it?" 

Pullar  looked  at  his  watch.  "I  don't  think 
it  will  take  long.  Would  it  be  possible  for  you 
to  come  to  the  judge's  house  to-night?" 

Stiles  looked  his  surprise.  "Then  the  judge  is 
one  of  you?" 

"The  judge,"  replied  Pullar,  "is  one  of  nobody. 
In  this  particular  matter,  his  humor  is  to  act  with 
us.  That  is,  it  seems  to  be — somewhat  to  my 
surprise,  I  will  admit." 

Stiles  walked  toward  the  door,   and  then  it 


3o6  CRATER'S    GOLD 

suddenly  occurred  to  his  host  that  he  had  for- 
gotten a  duty.  "I  say,  Stiles,  we'll  be  awfully 
sorry  to  lose  you." 

But  that  was  too  much.  Stiles  laughed  and 
Pullar  laughed  with  him. 

From  the  porch  of  the  little  office  Stiles  saw 
Eksberger  wandering  up  the  village  street,  looking 
from  side  to  side  and  wondering  what  part  of  it 
he  would  buy.  The  impresario  had  walked  with 
him  to  town  that  morning  to  see  what  remained 
of  the  car.  There  survived,  it  seemed,  more  than 
he  had  dared  to  hope. 

"Five  or  six  hundred  dollars,"  he  announced, 
as  he  reached  Stiles's  side,  "will  put  it  right. 
It's  a  shame,  but  I'm  lucky  to  get  off  with  that 
much." 

They  walked  on,  lazily,  to  the  post-office, 
where  Stiles  found  nothing  more  valuable  than 
three  glowing  circulars  praising  gilt-edge  indus- 
trial bonds.  One  day,  apparently,  after  he  had 
come  into  his  inheritance,  every  broker  in  the 
country  had  found  it  out.  He  received  adver- 
tisements from  incredible  places  for  brokers  to 
be — Wagon  Box,  Arizona,  and  Lockport,  New 
York.  He  threw  the  circulars  into  the  street  and 
fell  into  step  beside  his  companion. 

"Eksberger,"  he  said,  suddenly,  "which  had 
you  rather  be — Pullar  or  yourself?" 

Like  most  men,  Eksberger  had  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent manner  when  talking  to  only  one  person. 

"That's  a  silly  question,"  he  said,  but  quietly 


CRATER'S    GOLD  307 

enough.  ' '  Nobody  in  the  world  would  want  to  be 
any  one  else  except  perhaps  a  man  who  was  going 
to  be  hung,  and  I  don't  believe  he  would  until 
he'd  got  square  with  one  or  two  people  concerned. 

"I  know  what  you  mean,"  he  went  on,  a  mo- 
ment later,  " — the  paintings  and  all  that.  Of 
course  I'd  like  to  have  those,  and  who's  saying 
that  I  won't  have  them  some  day?  Of  course  I'd 
like  to  do  lots  of  things  that  I  can't  do  now,  but 
I'll  tell  you  this,  Stiles — perhaps  you  know  it  and 
perhaps  you  don't — those  people  waste  an  awful 
lot  of  time  thinking  that  the  rest  of  us  would  like 
to  be  them." 

For  the  moment  Stiles  had  to  confess  that  he 
was  disappointed.  Had  he  given  Eksberger,  the 
night  before,  credit  for  a  humility  which  he  had 
not  felt,  or  had  that  humility  been  so  superficial, 
so  purely  a  matter  of  trivial  pride,  that  one  night 
had  destroyed  it? 

It  took  him  a  minute  to  guess  what  actually 
had  happened.  The  humility  in  the  presence  of 
Pullar's  great  hall  had  been  genuine  enough,  but, 
humbled  as  he  had  been,  Eksberger  could  never 
be  humbled  enough  to  feel  really  inferior.  Pul- 
lar's unexpected  magnificence  had  opened  his 
eyes,  but  it  could  never  induce  him  to  worship 
Pullar.  It  had  merely  widened  his  plans.  To  be 
a  Pullar  had  simply  become  one  more  memoran- 
dum that  he  had  jotted  down  in  his  mind  and 
added  to  his  one  real  and  ever-growing  ambition 
of  being  Eksberger. 


3o8  CRATER'S    GOLD 

Every  one  of  his  friends  to  whom  he  had  talked 
of  this  man  had  given  Stiles  a  different  idea  of 
him,  yet  every  one  of  them,  like  Stiles  himself, 
had  not  been  able  to  deny  some  sort  of  admiration 
for  him.  Whether  Eksberger  really  did  have  that 
thing  called  brains,  Stiles  still  did  not  know, 
probably  never  would  know,  possibly  always 
would  have  his  doubts,  but,  as  Rose  had  said, 
there  stood  his  success — visible,  incontestable. 

For  Eksberger,  however,  the  subject  of  Pullar- 
ites  had  merely  begun. 

"You  see  those  kind  of  people  in  my  business, 
just  the  same  as  you  do  everywhere,  and  when 
they  get  tired  of  everything  else  what  do  they 
do?  Where  do  they  come?  To  the  theater,  just 
as  I  do,  just  as  you  do  yourself." 

With  a  grin  Stiles  saw  that,  lacking  evidences 
of  great  wealth,  or,  perhaps,  having  a  newspaper 
past,  he  himself  was  not  considered  a  Pullar. 
He  did  not  quarrel  with  a  status  which  enabled 
him  to  receive  more  of  Eksberger's  views  on  the 
class. 

"There  are  even  one  or  two  people  of  that  sort 
right  in  the  show  business,  arty  people  and  all 
that,"  Eksberger  went  on.  "That  is,  in  a  way 
there  are,  for  most  of  them  get  sick  of  it  soon 
enough.  But  what  can  they  do?  What  could  I 
do  if  I  went  to  some  big  bank  or  some  big  factory 
and  asked  to  begin  by  being  president  ?  Yet  that's 
what  they  want  to  do  when  they  try  to  get  into 
the  show  business — they  want  to  teach  us  in  six 


CRATER'S    GOLD  309 

months  what  we've  been  learning  a  lifetime  and 
haven't  learned  yet." 

"Nevertheless,  it's  been  done,"  insisted  Stiles, 
' '  even  in  the  banking  business.  It's  certainly  been 
done  in  war.  They  may  think  they've  learned 
something  about  it  from  study,  from  books." 

"Books,  yes !"  Exploded  Eksberger,  with  sudden 
and  unexpected  force.  "But  what  kind  of  books? 
I  don't  mind  books.  Give  me  the  right  kind  of 
a  book  and  I'll  sit  up  'til  morning  to  read  it,  but, 
the  minute  those  people  try  to  run  shows,  what 
do  they  want  to  put  on?  Some  Polish  thing  that 
nobody  ever  heard  of  even  in  Poland !  They  don't 
want  to  see  that  bunk  themselves.  When  they 
give  a  big  dinner-party  where  do  they  go?  To  the 
Winter  Garden.  But  they  seem  to  think  that 
everybody  else  ought  to  want  to  see  their  long- 
haired drama.  Let  them  have  it  if  they  want  it, 
but  not  on  my  money.  If  that's  what  they 
want,  let  them  come  across.  If  those  people 
would  guarantee  me  a  house  for  two  weeks — just 
two  weeks,  mind  you! — I'd  dramatize  the  whole 
damn  'Golden  Treasury  of  English  Verse'  and  get 
Fred  Stone  to  play  it." 

"Where,"  demanded  Stiles,  laughing,  "did  you 
ever  hear  of  'The  Golden  Treasury  of  English 
Verse'?" 

"It's  in  your  own  sitting-room,"  retorted  Eks- 
berger. "I  read  it  this  morning  before  you  got 
up — the  Turk  in  his  tent  and  all. 

"Stiles,"    he   went    on,    "you've    got    brains 


3io  CRATER'S    GOLD 

enough  if  you'd  only  use  them.  Why,  just  since 
I  have  been  up  here,  I  have  seen  enough  that  was 
never  written  in  books  to  make  a  dozen  good 
plays." 

"Do  you  want  me  to  write  one  of  them?" 
asked  Stiles. 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  Eksberger  had  to  con- 
fess. "You'd  probably  call  it  'Soul's  Slumber' 
and  make  it  tell  all  about  some  man  who  spent 
his  time  fretting  because  he  wasn't  somebody  else." 

"Anyway,"  asked  Stiles,  "have  you  made  up 
your  mind  whether  or  not  you  will  stay  over 
Sunday?  You'd  better.  I'm  going  to  town  on 
Monday  myself." 

"I  suppose  we  might  as  well,"  replied  Eksber- 
ger. "I  telephoned  to  the  office  from  the  garage. 
They'd  been  searching  all  over  the  country  won- 
dering where  I  was — everybody  was  asking — but 
nothing  seems  to  have  happened.  What  does 
Rose  say  about  it?" 

"She  said  last  night,"  replied  Stiles,  "that 
seven  o'clock  this  morning  was  going  to  see  her 
seated  on  the  station  platform,  ticket  in  hand, 
waiting  for  the  nine-o'clock  train;  but  she's  still 
here;  at  least  she  was  when  we  left." 

"That's  Rose  all  over,"  said  Eksberger,  in  a 
lower  tone.  "She's  a  good  girl,  but  you  can 
never  tell  from  one  minute  to  another  what  she 
will  do.  She  says  herself  she  doesn't  know  what 
she  wants.  Hello!  Fieldsie  has  got  her  cows 
out  again." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  311 

They  had  reached  the  bridge  near  the  house 
where  the  stream  was  now  running  on  as  calmly 
as  if  nothing  had  ever  happened.  Except  for  the 
matted  grass  and  the  patches  of  thick,  caked  mud 
in  the  road,  the  brook  had  kept  its  own  secret. 
Just  how  it  had  broken  out  of  the  mine,  how  it 
had  filled  its  new  channel,  and  how  it  had  taken 
up  again  with  the  old,  there  was  nothing  to  show 
any  more  than  there  had  been  sixty  or  seventy 
years  before,  when  Bugby  had  sworn  and  old 
Major  Crater  had  chuckled. 

With  his  three  guests,  Stiles  had  already  made 
a  trip  of  exploration  that  morning,  but,  except 
for  the  scattered  puddles,  there  had  been  little  to 
see  as  result  of  the  mine's  eruption — a  few  rotted 
fragments  of  beams  like  those  they  had  found 
in  the  upper  passage,  a  few  bits  of  dark-blue  cloth 
so  water-soaked  and  so  featureless  that  they 
might  have  been  woven  three  years  before  and 
might  have  been  woven  a  hundred.  Now,  how- 
ever, two  of  Mrs.  Fields's  cows  were  eating  the 
soaked  green  grass  of  the  meadow  with  a  relish 
heightened  by  their  two  long  weeks  of  confine- 
ment. The  third,  the  mother  of  the  little  black 
calf,  was  under  an  old  gnarled  apple-tree  putting 
her  son  in  shape  for  this  new  phase  of  life.  "Slick, 
slick,"  she  seemed  to  be  saying,  as,  with  waves 
of  her  head,  she  ran  her  tongue  from  one  end  of 
his  little  black  body  to  the  other,  "this  rough 
old  coat — slick,  slick — was  good  enough  for  the — 
slick,  slick — mine;  but  now  that  you're  out — slick, 

21 


3i2  CRATER'S    GOLD^ 

slick — where  folkses  will  see  you,  you've  got — 
slick,  slick — to  clean  up." 

"I  can't  see  that  they're  blind,"  remarked 
Stiles. 

"Blind?"  replied  Eksberger,  "I  should  say  not. 
Look  at  the  old  girl  go  to  it." 

When  they  reached  the  house  Rose  was  walk- 
ing under  the  trees  with  Baumgarten.  Eksberger 
joined  them,  but  Stiles  went  on  into  the  house, 
where  Mrs.  Fields  met  him  mysteriously  in  the 
hall.  She  had  something  big  and  lumpy  under 
her  apron,  and,  with  a  nod  of  her  head,  she  beck- 
oned him  to  follow  her  into  the  kitchen.  There, 
looking  to  right  and  to  left,  she  drew  out  a 
brass  box,  green  with  tarnish  and  mold.  Stiles 
took  it  and 'looked  at  it  curiously.  In  the  scroll- 
work of  the  hammered  cover  he  could  see  faint 
letters.  He  pointed  them  out  to  Mrs.  Fields,  and 
she  scrubbed  them  a  bit  with  her  apron. 

"I  found  that  down  in  the  meadow  this  morn- 
ing," she  said.  "It  must  have  been  washed  from 
the  mine." 

The  work  of  her  apron  had  brought  out  the 
letters  with  some  distinctness,  and  Stiles  pointed 
to  them  again. 

"Can  you  read  those?"  he  asked. 

Without  the  affectation  of  spectacles'  Mrs. 
Fields  shook  her  head,  and  Stiles  went  out  to  the 
group  on  the  lawn.  He  held  out  his  treasure. 
"Mrs.  Fields  found  this.  It  was  washed  from 
the  mine." 


CRATER'S   GOLD  313 

He  handed  the  box  to  Rose,  who  turned  it 
round  and  round  slowly. 

"Why,  there  are  letters  on  it!"  she  cried. 

Eksberger  looked  at  it  eagerly  and  Stiles  smiled. 

"'R-E,'"  read  Rose.     "What  is  it— Latin?" 

"It's  Spanish,"  said  Stiles,  and  he  read  the 
letters  hammered  into  the  scroll-work  of  the  box: 
"'R-E-C-U-E-R-D-O-S,  Recuerdos.'  That  means 
'keepsakes.'" 

They  stood  looking  on  that  solitary  relic  in 
silence.  At  last  Rose  asked  in  a  rather  faint 
voice : 

"But  how  did  it  get  there?  Who  did  it  belong 
to?" 

"A  lady,  I  imagine,"  said  Stiles.  "It  might 
have  been  Mrs.  Fields's  great-great-grandmother. 
It  might  have  been  mine." 

They  looked  again  at  the  little  brass  box,  then 
Eksberger  asked,  "Aren't  you  going  to  open  it?" 

Stiles  did  so. 

"Nothing,"  he  said. 

Baumgarten  stood  a  pace  away  from  the  others. 
"That  part  of  the  story,"  he  suggested,  "I  didn't 
hear.  What  did  you  think  you  would  find?" 

"Nothing,"  said  Stiles. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

DAUMGARTEN  was  fidgety  after  dinner  that 
-D  night. 

"Say,  what  do  you  think?"  he  asked,  at  last. 
"Shall  we  have  another  fire?" 

' ' Righto !' '  said  Eksberger.  "Let's  have  Field- 
sie  in  and  get  her  to  tell  us  the  story  of  her  life." 

Stiles  looked  at  his  watch.  "By  the  way, 
Baumgarten,"  he  said,  "Mrs.  Fields  says  that  a 
messenger  came  this  afternoon  to  have  you  call 
up  New  York.  I'm  afraid  there's  no  telephone 
nearer  than  town.  Will  you  walk  down  with  me  ?" 

Baumgarten  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "I'll 
come,"  he  said,  shortly. 

As  they  fell  into  step  in  the  road,  Stiles  re- 
marked, "Of  course  there  wasn't  any  message." 

"I  understood  that,"  replied  Baumgarten, 
gruffly.  "Going  to  sell  your  place,  are  you?" 

"Yes,"  replied  Stiles,  rather  astonished.  He 
thought  a  moment  and  then  added,  "I  presume 
you  don't  want  to  buy  it  now?" 

"It  was  take  it  or  leave  it,  Stiles,"  replied  the 
other  man,  quietly.  "I  never  go  back  on  my 
word." 

There  might  have  been  a  note  of  real  resent- 


CRATER'S   GOLD  315 

ment  in  his  tone.  Stiles  understood  that  he  would 
never  know  what  had  been  written  on  that  slip 
of  paper  that  he  had  refused  to  look  at,  but  the 
resentment,  if  it  really  existed,  extended  only  to 
that  one  transaction.  Otherwise  Baumgarten  was 
friendly  enough. 

"Given  up  your  idea  of  living  here  yourself ?" 
he  asked. 

"I'm  old,"  answered  Stiles,  "too  old  to  learn. 
If  I  were  Pullar  it  would  be  all  right,  but  I  haven't 
the  figure  for  tweeds.  I  thought  I  could  do  it. 
I  thought  I  was  sick  of  New  York — " 

"If  it  gets  in  your  blood  it  never  gets  out," 
interrupted  Baumgarten,  quickly.  "Take  Rose, 
now.  She's  always  been  talking  about  a  house  in 
the  country." 

"She  told  me  she  had,"  answered  Stiles,  quietly. 
He  had  finally  learned  that  frankness  was  the 
only  policy  with  this  man.  His  companion  did 
not  misunderstand  the  brief  sentence  and  walked 
along  moodily. 

"Of  course,"  said  Stiles,  "if  I  could  have  New 
York  come  to  me  now  and  then  as  it  has  this 
week — " 

The  older  man  broke  in,  roughly,  "Stiles,  New 
York  will  never  come  to  you  again  as  it  has  this 
week." 

Stiles  made  no  reply  and  they  walked  in  a  si- 
lence again  almost  hostile. 

"About  this  meeting?"  suggested  Baumgarten, 
quickly. 


3i6  CRATER'S   GOLD 

"When  a  man  goes  to  fight  a  duel,"  said  Stiles, 
"he  takes  along  a  friend  who  knows  something 
about  pistols.  When  he  goes  to  talk  business,  he 
takes  a  friend  who  knows  something  about 
business." 

"I  ought  to  know  something  about  it,"  replied 
Baumgarten.  He  added:  "You  heard  your  an- 
swer down  in  the  mine,  didn't  you?  Ask  'em  for 
forty  thousand,  let  'em  beat  you  down  to  twenty- 
five,  then  stick  like  a  bur." 

As  if  he  were  planning  a  sale  in  his  own  New 
York  office,  Baumgarten  began  once  more  to  talk 
smoothly  and  confidently: 

"Nine- tenths  of  the  land  in  this  town  is  owned 
by  members  of  a  corporation  known  as  the  Eden 
Realty  Company." 

"I  knew  that,"  said  Stiles,  "but  how  did  you 
know  it?" 

Baumgarten  snorted.  "I  don't  do  things  blind. 
I  found  that  out  the  day  I  came.  It  is  a  volun- 
tary association,  incorporated  under  the  laws  of 
the  state  of  Massachusetts,  and  empowered  to  do 
about  everything  in  the  world  except  commit 
murder.  Actually  it's  an  estate-owners'  protec- 
tive league  designed  to  keep  out  the  roughnecks. 
The  minute  I  found  that  out  I  knew  there'd  be 
nothing  doing  with  Pullar  for  me.  That's  why  I 
came  directly  to  you.  It  made  me  mad  in  a  way." 

"You  don't  call  yourself  a  roughneck,  do  you?" 
asked  Stiles. 

"I'm  no  lily-of-the-valley,"  replied  Baumgarten. 


CRATER'S   GOLD  317 

At  the  judge's  house  Pullar  and  his  brother- 
in-law  were  waiting  stiffly  in  the  old  parlor,  and  the 
four  bowed  silently  with  the  ridiculous  formality 
of  men  who  may  have  seen  one  another  all  day 
but  meet  at  night  to  transact  business.  The  judge 
came  in  behind  the  others,  a  suspicious  twinkle 
in  his  eye.  He  was  going  to  enjoy  this  scene. 

Stiles  saw  no  reason  why  time  should  be  lost. 

"Without  beating  about  the  bush,"  he  began, 
"I  understand  that  you  gentlemen  and  others  are 
prepared  to  purchase  my  property.  Am  I  cor- 
rect?" 

There  was  a  silence.  Pullar  looked  at  old 
Colonel  Cady  and  the  latter  cleared  his  throat. 
"You  are  correct." 

"Well,  then,"  continued  Stiles,  "I  have  drawn 
up  a  deed." 

He  took  a  paper  from  his  pocket  and  handed 
it  to  Pullar.  Pullar  opened  his  eyes  as  he  read  it. 

"By  any  chance  are  you  a  lawyer,  Stiles?" 

"No,"  replied  Stiles,  "but  I  speak  the  lan- 
guage." 

"Perhaps  you  had  better  read  it,"  suggested 
the  judge,  and  Pullar  began: 

"Know  all  men  by  these  presents  that  I,  Andrew  Stiles 
of  the  city  and  county  of  New  York  in  the  state  of  New  York, 
for  divers  good  causes  and  considerations  thereunto  mov- 
ing—" 

Pullar  looked  up.  "I  guess  I  can  skip  this," 
he  suggested.  The  others  nodded  and  he  went  on : 


3i8  CRATERS   GOLD 

" — especially  for  the  sum  of  one  dollar  and  other  con- 
siderations received — " 

"Just  a  minute,"  interrupted  Colonel  Cady. 
"We  can  hardly  proceed  until  we  know  what  the 
other  considerations  are." 

"May  I  suggest,"  replied  Stiles,  "that  before 
we  touch  on  that  point  you  read  the  conditions 
attached." 

Pullar  turned  over  the  sheets,  mumbling  hur- 
riedly over  the  formal  phraseology.  ' '  Is  this  what 
you  mean?"  he  asked,  "  'Said  members  of  the  said 
Eden  Realty  Company  do  agree  and  covenant'?" 

Stiles  nodded  and  Pullar  read  aloud: 

"Said  members  of  the  said  Eden  Realty  Company  do 
agree  and  covenant,  collectively  and  individually,  and  do 
hereby  bind  themselves  by  acceptance  of  this  quit-claim 
deed  to  the  following  reservations: 

"i.  No  mining  or  other  enterprise  for  gain  or  profit  with 
the  exception  of  agriculture,  husbandry,  horticulture,  or 
herding,  shall  ever  be  practised  in  or  on  the  said  property 
.  .  .  and  on  violation  of  this  clause  ...  all  title  in  the  said 
property  shall  revert  to  the  grantor  or  his  heirs  or  assigns. 

"2.  A  cottage  erected  on  any  part  of  said  property  at  the 
expense  of  the  said  Andrew  Stiles  may  be  maintained  for  the 
benefit  of  one  Mary  Jane  Fields,  widow  of — " 

"Asahel  Fields,"  supplied  the  judge,  promptly, 
and  Pullar  wrote  it  into  the  deed: 

" — and  by  her  occupied  during  her  lifetime  or  pleasure. 

"3.  Access  to  and  the  right  to  take  from  the  said  property 

any  books,  furniture,  documents,  monuments,  relics,  or  any 

other  articles  of  historical  or  artistic  interest  whatsoever 


CRATER'S    GOLD  319 

shall  be  given  at  any  time  to  Judge  Abner  A.  Tyler  of  the 
said  town  of  Eden  in  recognition  of  his  faithful  stewardship 
of  said  property  and  other  property  of  the  present  and 
previous  title-holders." 

Pullar  looked  up  from  the  sheets.  "My  word! 
Stiles,"  he  exclaimed.  "Is  this  a  quit-claim  or 
your  last  will  and  testament?" 

"Both,"  replied  Stiles,  "so  far  as  Eden  is 
concerned." 

Pullar  continued  his  reading: 

"4.  A  plot  to  be  designated  by  said  Andrew  Stiles  and  not 
to  exceed  one  acre,  comprising  the  sites  of  both  the  old 
and  new  Crater  mansions  so-called,  shall  be  held  in  perpetual 
trusteeship  by  said  Abner  A.  Tyler  and  such  successors  as 
may  be  hereafter  appointed.  All  houses,  barns,  stables, 
granaries,  and  other  buildings  whatsoever  now  standing  on 
the  said  plot  shall  be  razed  at  the  earliest  practicable  moment 
and  the  ground  so  graded  as  to  remove  all  traces  of  such 
buildings,  the  expense  of  this  action  to  be  borne  by  the  said 
Andrew  Stiles.  Thereafter  no  buildings  or  edifices  of  any 
kind  shall  be  erected  on  such  plot  with  the  exception  of  a 
memorial  to  be  designed  and  designated  by  the  said  grantor, 
Andrew  Stiles." 

Pullar  looked  up.     "That  seems  to  be  all." 

"That  is  all,"  replied  Stiles. 

Colonel  Cady  was  stroking  his  mustache.  "You 
have  made  a  good  many  conditions,  Mr.  Stiles." 

"Those  are  the  only  conditions  on  which  I  will 
sell." 

"Hum,"  said  the  colonel.  A  long  pause  fol- 
lowed and  then  he  suggested:  "Now  as  to  the 
other  considerations.  I  take  it  for  granted  that 


320  CRATER'S    GOLD 

you  do  not  mean  to  sell  your  property  for  one 
dollar." 

Stiles  smiled,  but  for  a  moment  he  did  not  reply. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  at  last.  "It  has — well,  I 
may  say  that  it  has  come  to  my  ears  that  you  would 
be  willing  to  pay  twenty-five  thousand  dollars." 

Pullar  and  Cady  looked  blank.  Baumgarten 
and  the  judge  smiled. 

"The  property,  you  understand,"  said  Colonel 
Cady,  slowly,  "has  no  such  intrinsic  value  at  all. 
There  are  merely  certain  abnormal  circumstances 
which  have  given  it  what  I  may  call  a  fictitious 
value."  He  looked  toward  his  brother-in-law  and 
made  the  slightest  motion  of  his  head.  Pullar 
spoke: 

"Is  that  your  price — er — Mr.  Stiles?" 

"Are  the  conditions  otherwise  acceptable?"  in- 
sisted Stiles. 

The  brothers-in-law  looked  at  each  other. 

"I  think  so,"  said  Pullar. 

"Well,  gentlemen,"  said  Stiles,  quickly.  "The 
conditions,  as  Mr.  Cady  says,  are — abnormal.  I 
am  not  a  philanthropist;  neither  am  I  a  black- 
mailer. Three  weeks  ago  the  price  of  that  prop- 
erty was  seven  thousand  dollars.  Seven  thousand 
dollars  is  the  price  to-day." 

"You're  a  fool,  Stiles,  an  absolute  fool,"  re- 
marked Baumgarten  as,  half  an  hour  later,  they 
walked  up  the  dark  village  street. 

"That,"  said  Stiles,  "is  one  of  the  things  I  now 
can  afford  to  be.  It  is  one  of  my  new  luxuries." 


CRATER'S    GOLD  321 

"It's  a  strange  luxury,"  muttered  Baumgarten, 
"but  I  don't  see  what  you  wanted  me  for." 

Stiles  laughed.     "I  thought  you'd  enjoy  it." 

"I  did,"  Baumgarten  replied.  "It  was  regular 
stage  stuff.  And  I'll  have  to  grant,"  he  added, 
a  moment  later,  "that  if  you  wanted  to  be  such 
an  ass  you  did  it  in  style.  I'll  bet  you've  even 
got  a  picture  of  the  memorial." 

"I  have,"  said  Stiles,  simply.  "I've  enjoyed 
that,  too.  The  place  where  the  houses  stood  will 
be  leveled  and  turfed  and  a  small  stone  put  up." 

"With  your  name  on  it?" 

"With  nobody's  name  on  it,"  answered  Stiles, 
stiffly.  He  did  not  intend  to  say  more,  but  he 
was,  at  the  moment,  in  rather  theatric  mood,  and 
he  drew  from  his  pocket  an  envelop.  "This  is 
what  it  will  be." 

Baumgarten  took  it  and  stopped  to  read  in  the 
faint  light  of  one  of  the  street-lamps.  On  the 
envelop  was  a  rather  neat  sketch  of  a  simple 
stone  and  on  it  the  plain  inscription: 


Here  Lived 

And  Died 

An  American  Family 


The  instant  that  he  had  given  the  envelop 
Stiles  regretted  it.  If  Baumgarten  should  laugh 
he  believed  that  he  would  strike  him,  but  Baum- 


322  CRATER'S    GOLD 

garten  did  not  laugh.  He  handed  it  back  and 
walked  on  without  a  word. 

"Stiles,"  he  said,  a  moment  later,  "I  told  you 
that  you  had  something  worth  more  than  that 
copper-mine." 

Stiles  did  not  ask  what  it  was,  and  he  did  not 
have  to,  for  Baumgarten  went  on: 

"Class,  Stiles,  class!" 

After  that  almost  anything  could  be  said  be- 
tween the  two  men,  and  Baumgarten  knew  it. 

"Stiles,"  he  said,  slowly,  "you  know  why  I 
ask.  Are  you  going  to  marry  Rose  Fuller?" 

"Yes,"  answered  Stiles,  quietly. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

JUDGE  TYLER  walked  up  the  platform  of  the 
Eden  station  to  find  Rose  and  Stiles  looking 
up  the  track  for  the  nine-o'clock  train,  but  the 
presence  of  Stiles,  in  clothes  which  had  lain  in 
his  trunk  for  three  weeks,  did  not  seem  to  surprise 
him.  He  seemed  more  concerned  to  explain, 
almost  shamefaced,  his  own  presence. 

"I  mistrusted  you'd  all  be  leaving  this  morn- 
ing. So  you're  going,  too?" 

"Yes,"  said  Stiles.  "To  stay  now  would  be 
anticlimax." 

The  word  seemed  to  do  for  the  judge  as  well  as 
another,  for  he  was  looking  back  over  the  hills 
with  dreams  of  his  own.  "I  thought  so.  I 
thought  so.  Your  grandfather,  old  Major  Crater, 
was  just  such  a  one.  He'd  be  here  for  months, 
content  as  a  mud-turtle,  then  puff!  he  was  off." 

Eksberger,  with  Baumgarten's  help,  had  been 
trying  to  draw  out  from  the  reticent  station- 
agent  the  number  of  weeks  which  would  probably 
elapse  before  a  freight-car  could  be  secured  to 
take  his  motor  back  to  the  city,  but  at  sight  of 
the  judge  he  came  up  and  held  out  his  hand. 


324  CRATER'S    GOLD 

"Judge,  how  are  you?" 

The  judge  looked  him  up  and  down  as  he  al- 
ways did. 

"In  the  words  of  the  Felsted  Courier,"  he  said, 
"I  see  you're  leaving  our  midst." 

"Yes,"  laughed  Eksberger,  "but,  Judge,  let 
me  whisper  you  something.  Just  as  soon  as  I 
get  things  right,  I'm  going  to  come  back  here  and 
buy  me  a  nice  little  farm." 

"Yes,"  replied  the  judge,  slowly,  "yes,  I've 
heard  men  say  that." 

Baumgarten  joined  them  with  twinkling  eyes. 

"Judge,"  he  said,  heartily,  "do  you  ever  get 
down  to  the  big  city?" 

The  judge  looked  over  the  hills.  "No,"  he 
said,  slowly.  "No,  I  don't  go  away — any  more." 

He  did  not  convince  his  hearer  any  more  than 
Stiles  had  done  the  first  day. 

"Nonsense,  Judge!"  exclaimed  Baumgarten. 
"The  trouble  is  that,  unless  you  know  the  inside, 
you  never  see  New  York  as  it  ought  to  be  seen." 
He  reached  into  his  pocket  and  drew  out  a  card. 
"There's  my  telephone  number.  Now  some  fine 
day  you  make  up  your  mind,  just  get  on  a  train 
and  come  down.  We'll  show  you  the  time  of 
your  life — a  bang-up  dinner,  a  show,  and  then 
Eksberger  here  will  take  you  behind  the  scenes." 

The  judge  seemed  unmoved  and  Baumgarten 
thought  the  inducement  misunderstood.  He 
repeated:  "Ever  been  behind  the  scenes  in  a 
theater,  Judge?" 


CRATER'S    GOLD  325 

The  old  man  looked  over  the  hills  and  at  last 
he  smiled  faintly. 

"Behind  the  scenes  in  a  theater?"  he  asked. 
"Just  one.  It  was  in  Rome,  Italy."  He  mused 
a  moment  over  the  recollection.  "They  was  a 
feller— " 


THE    END 


A     000127945     4 


